


Gender Bender

by Cyber Moggy (janet_mayfire)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adventure, Crack Treated Seriously, Eventual Stoki, Eventual winteriron, F/F, Gender Confusion, Humour, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), recovered Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janet_mayfire/pseuds/Cyber%20Moggy
Summary: Tony spent the evening drunk in his workshop.  Steve is so gonna regret that!





	1. Chapter 1

=^o^=

Tony blinked up at the ceiling of his workshop, and tried to figure out why the hell he had had so much to drink last night.  He’d drunk enough that pistons and printed circuit boards had started to float in front of his imagination, happiness and technology combining forces to chase away the nightmares by recombining in new and interesting ways.  Cogs and gears and plumes of steam had also entered the mix at one point, and he wasn’t sure what to think of that.

Okay.  There’d been an industry get-together.  One of those informal impromptu ones that happened in the back rooms of exclusive clubs whenever more than three of them were present.  Last night’s had been one of the bigger ones.

Let’s see....  He’d handshaked on a deal with a components supplier to make a new part Stark Industries’ new Smart House technology would need to have custom made, and would blow both Samsung and Apple out of the water - at least for a few months, whilst they struggled to catch up and get their own gear together.  By which time he’d have the last of the PBCAC kinks straightened out.  And by the time the competition had got their act together, he’d have the first upgrades ready.

He’d accepted the congratulations of several of them on the success of the new StarkPhone.  Quite a few of them had one, too, he’d been pleased to notice.

He’d let himself be slyly prodded about a possible gaming system that wouldn’t be coming out anytime soon (if at all), because none of his technical staff wanted to work on it, and his corporate agreements people were already crying out for more staff or mercy from new work - particularly when it came to brand new projects that nobody wanted to start.

Then, Michelle Konis (CEO of one of the largest electronics retail chains in the country, businessman of the year on three separate occasions, and genuinely the nicest person any of them had ever met) had arrived, looking stunned and delighted.  “I’m going to be a grandmother!” she had told them.

Ah.  Yes.  Now he remembered.  It had been a celebration.  The champagne had started to flow at that point, and they’d all gotten extremely drunk.  He’d been on the verge of passing out when he’d signalled to a staff member to fetch Happy, and by the time they were back in the Tower, the visions of brand new and exciting ways of recombining electronics and goodness only knows what else had begun to spin in front of his eyes.  Happy had deposited him on the couch in his workshop because he always slept better there than he did in his penthouse bedroom when he was drunk.

So.  He’d sorted that out.  He had, at least, got blindingly drunk for happy reasons instead of sad ones.  Carefully, he sat up.  That worked as well.  He felt like he’d had every last resource his body possessed pumped out of him, but a good breakfast and a gallon or two of coffee would fix that problem.  “Friday, what time is it?”

“It is 2.13pm, boss,” Friday replied.

“Send my PR staff a message.  Tell them that Michelle Konis is expecting her first grandchild, and we need to congratulate her.  There’s plenty of coffee upstairs, I hope.”

“Done, and yes, boss.  The supply was replenished this morning.”

“Good.”

Tony dragged himself to his feet and headed for the elevator.  

By the time he got to the kitchen, he was stumbling and his head was starting to spin a little.  Not for the first time, he wished he had human servants who could bring him breakfast down in his workshop.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Barnes commented, and shoved a coffee pod into the machine.  “Sit,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Tony mumbled and did as he was told before Barnes’ presence had properly registered.  As the smell of fresh coffee filled the room, his brain kicked up half a gear.  “Barnes?  When did you get here?”

Barnes gave him a patient look that told Tony he’d figured out Tony had a hangover, and that his brain was still stuttering and tripping over its own neurones from being forced to run on  the wrong fuel mix for too long.  “Yesterday.  With the others.  We all got back from Wakanda after the US government pardoned us.  Remember?”

Reluctantly, Tony did.  “Ah.  Yes.  There was a formal press conference where nothing went wrong.  We came back here and got everybody settled in.  I found a long boring meeting to escape to before things got too uncomfortable.  Then I had to go to my club to smirk at my fellow businessmen about the new phone model.”

Mentally, Tony winced at the phrase “my club.”  But he had to use it these days.  If he didn’t, people would ask him which club he was talking about, and then he would have to explain.  His father would have been horrified that he actually knew people who didn’t automatically understand which club he was talking about when he said “the club.”  But then, whilst Howard had enjoyed working with Shield, and the assorted people he’d known during the second World War, he had not regarded any of them as ‘people like us.’  He certainly hadn’t socialised with any of them.

If asked, Tony would say, with 98% accuracy, that he didn’t miss spending all his time with ‘people like us,’ and that Howard was a snob of the first water.  The other two percent just wished that Howard had told him that he loved him.

Bucky placed a mug of coffee in front of him.  “Friday, what does he usually eat for breakfast?”

Friday obligingly rattled off a list of preferred breakfast foods whilst Tony absorbed coffee into his system and waited for his brain to kick up another notch or two.

Bucky grabbed a box of instant oats and some fresh fruit from the pantry and got to work.  Seemingly moments later, a spoon and a bowl of porridge was placed in front of him, accompanied by the order “eat.”

Tony once more instinctively said “Yes, sir,” and did as he was told.  He was half-way down the bowl when his brain started to function normally.  “When did you learn to give orders like that?  Not even Cap can do it!”

Bucky smirked at him and poured himself a cup of tea.  “I spent years practicing on Steve,” he replied.  “Best way of keeping him out of trouble.”

“Thanks, by the way.”

“Not a problem.  Gotta find some way to earn my keep around here.”

“You don’t have to,” Tony replied, genuinely confused.  He’d never had to work a day in his life, and he was pretty sure he never had done any actual work.  Sure, business meetings weren’t that interesting, but there weren’t that many of them.  Money just kind of happened to flow his way whilst he was amusing himself by making things people wanted to buy.  That wasn’t work - that was fun.

“Yeah, I do.  I’ll go out of my mind if I can’t make myself useful somehow.”

“What did you do before?” Tony asked curiously.

“Before the army?  Factory work.  Was lucky to get it, too.”

“What do you want to do with yourself?”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asked, staring at him.

“What are your skills?  What are your dreams?  Do you want to go to university or something?”

Barnes laughed loudly for a second, before shutting himself up.  “Skills?  University?  I never even finished high school.  What the hell kind of value to my skills and dreams have these days?  Except the wartime ones, of course.”

Tony finished his oats, and leaned back in his chair.  “Depression,” he said thoughtfully, skating deftly over the thin ice of “wartime” and the unspoken “post-wartime” activities with the unconscious ease of long practice, and another synapse clicked reluctantly into place.  “You didn’t get much education, then.”  Stating the obvious, there, but at least it continued the conversation in a useful way.

Bucky shrugged.  “Nothing more than the government said I had to have.”

“How do you feel about finishing high school?”

Bucky stared at him.  “Are you serious?”

Sure.  You said yourself you never had the chance before.  Look, the Maria Stark foundation works with a lot of people who never got to finish school and wound up on the street, too, because of it.  They tell me there are some very good programs around to get adults through high school and into careers, or universities, or whatever.  If you want to, of course.”

Bucky looked a little stunned.  “That never even occurred to me,” he whispered.

Tony smiled at him, patted his shoulder, and put his dishes into the dishwasher.  “Let me know if you’re interested.  Friday can find you some literature about it.”  

He left Barnes sitting at the kitchen table, and headed towards his apartment.  Now that he had eaten and had coffee, he had time to notice that he smelt like sweat, dirt, oil, and WD40.  It was his own personal eau de toilette, and whilst he didn’t mind it after he’d been in the workshop for three days, it felt ghastly and indulgent when all he’d done was to drink too much and pass out on his favourite couch.

Behind him, a door at the opposite end of the corridor opened and shut again, but the elevator doors had closed on him before he had a chance to register more than a tall body and blond hair.  Steve, of course.

=^o^=

Bucky sipped his tea thoughtfully as Tony left the kitchen.  He had never had the luxury to think about his future before.  Before the war, life had been all about survival.  Then the war had started, and his life had been in the hands of other people.  He had thought about freedom, whenever he had enough control over his own mind to daydream.  He’d imagined what he might do.  But the dreams had faded with the onset of reality.  As soon as he started wondering what he would have to do to achieve those dreams, he came up hard against some basic facts of life.  

His lack of education came first and foremost on the list.  Sure he wanted to invent a flying car (even though certified genius Howard Stark hadn’t managed to do it) - but he had barely started even studying at high school before he’d had to leave again to get a job and help support the family.  Which was all very good and well and completely necessary, since he didn’t want his family to starve, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of life which allowed him to consider his dreams.

Now that he didn’t have to work for a living, or support anybody, he didn't know what to do with himself except dream of flying cars in a future that didn’t have them yet.  Since he’d never had to consider his dreams in the context of reality, he had no idea what he ought to be doing to achieve those dreams.  There wasn’t even anything that he could think of to do that would fill in his time.  There were no civilian activities he was qualified for other than factory work, and he really couldn't handle the notion of living on a rich man’s dime without doing anything for it.

It had never once occurred to him that he could get himself educated.

“Friday, could you please show me that literature Tony mentioned before?”

“Sure thing, Sergeant.”

A web page appeared on a floating screen in front of him, and he started to read.

He’d been scanning through the pages for almost forty seconds (automatically counted them, he noticed.  There’s a non-combat skill he has.  Bucky Barnes, the Human Clock) when he heard an unfamiliar set of footsteps outside the kitchen door.  “Friday, save this for me, please, and close it.”

The web page disappeared as he turned, his favourite knife in his left hand and an old Stark Industries pistol (custom made by Howard Stark and formally presented to him on his first day back in the USA, loaded and in perfect working order, at the press conference, by Tony) in his right.

The footsteps were hesitant.  Not as though they were unfamiliar with the layout of the Tower or of their place in it, but stumbling a little over themselves, as though the owner was not quite certain about how they were supposed to be moving.  How their body worked.

He frowned.  It was… most peculiar.

The door opened, and in walked a statuesque amazon with short, spiky blonde hair.  She was shapely, broad-shouldered, and beautiful.  She certainly shouldn’t have been uncertain in her movements.

She also shouldn’t have looked so familiar.  

But she did look familiar.  The blonde hair, the broad shoulders, the height… the way her right hand raised to brush her left bicep, as though she wasn’t quite certain about the way it felt… 

“Bucky?” she asked, her contralto voice as uncertain as her movements.  “Have you seen Tony this morning?”

“Ma’am?” he asked, feeling as off-balance as she clearly did.  “Who are you, and how do you know me?”  And why, he wondered to himself, are you calling me Bucky?

“Bucky, knock it off,” the blonde replied, her voice abruptly certain.  “It’s me.  Steve!  Have you seen Tony?”

It was though she had been a blurry image that now snapped into focus.  It was, he knew, his old friend Steve, in a brand new body.

The only thing that stopped Bucky from gibbering in complete confusion was the knowledge that so much weird shit had happened to them over the years that a friend unexpectedly changing gender did not phase him.

Sometimes Bucky wondered what it said about him, that his best friend transforming from a nine stone weakling into a superhero who needed to eat practically his own bodyweight daily in order to survive had also not been enough to freak him out.  Perhaps he had simply been too out of it at the time to care.  None of that was enough to explain why the idea of his best friend turning into a woman didn’t do more than make him alert.

At least Steve the Amazon was roughly the same size and shape (give or take a few lumps and bumps) as Steve the Super American GI was.

“Steve.  Sorry.  I didn’t recognise you at first.  Why are you looking for Tony?”

Steve glared at him.  “Because he did this to me!”

“Tony turned you into a woman?”

“Yes!  He got plastered last night, and then went into his workshop.  The man is a menace when he is drunventing!”

“Drunkventing?”

“Yeah.  Drunken inventing.  You know, like Howard used to after he’d had a few too many.”

Bucky winced, remembering the kinds of misshapen and poorly considered things that Howard Stark had come up with when he’d been allowed into his workshop whilst drunk.  After a while, any time the words “Howard Stark,” “alcohol” and “workshop” appeared in one sentence, everybody had known it was time to run.  “Sure, but Howard never managed to bend the laws of reality like this.  I mean, this might be the twenty first century, but surely not even plastic surgery could pull off a physical change like this.  Not overnight.  Right, Friday?”

“That is correct, Sergeant,” Friday chirped.  “Your current physical change is not compatible with the laws of science, Captain Rogers.”

“That only leaves magic,” Bucky said as Steve headed for the kettle.

“Tony hates magic,” Steve replied as she made herself a cup of tea.

“And yet, here you are.  The wrong gender.”

“Which brings me back to my main question.  Where’s Tony?  Friday, do you know where he is?”

“Mr Stark is heading back to his apartment to shower, Captain Rogers.”

Bucky watched as Steve’s hand tightened around her mug of tea.  Carefully and deliberately, she loosened her grip to less dangerous levels and took it to the kitchen table.  She sat down.  “Bucky, was he in here?”   
  
“Yes, Steve, he was.  He was hungover and looked and smelled like he’d been in his workshop for several days.  I made him coffee and breakfast.”

“The shower is recommended for him?”

“Yes, Steve, it is. Fairly urgently.  So you want some breakfast?”

Steve looked torn for a moment, but said yes.  Bucky extracted bacon and eggs from the fridge and set to work once more.

=^o^=

With breakfast inside him, showered, with all the proper emails sent (from the sanctuary of the shower, as usual, with Friday’s able assistance), Tony felt considerably better than he had when he had woken up.  Sure, the previous evening was a blank in his memory, the memory-stutters having started long before he’d called for Happy, but the beginnings of the evening did not bode badly for the rest of the evening.

Besides, he’d woken up on the couch in his workshop, rather than in bed with some good-time girl (or guy - or even one of his fellow wealthy company owners, which had happened on a couple of occasions in the past.).  The chances were that nothing particularly embarrassing had happened whilst he had not been forming short-term memory related synapse links in his brain.  (Yeah, he’d got curious once and looked it up.  He’d been sober at the time, and thus remembered it.)  He headed back down to his workshop.

There was a gun-shaped object sitting on the bench.  A charred wreck of a gun-shaped object.  It sure as hell hadn’t been there the day before.  “Friday?” he asked.  “There’s a gun-shaped object on my workbench.  Did I build it?”

“Yes, boss,” Friday replied.

“Did I use it on anybody?”

“Yes, boss.”

His heart and stomach collided as they headed towards his boots, and Tony staggered towards the couch and collapsed into it.  He sat with his head between his knees for a minute or two before he decided he was ready to face up to reality again.

“There aren’t any corpses visible.”

"The gun-shaped object does not appear to have been built with killing in mind, boss.”

Well, that was something.  “Show me the footage,” he ordered.

A screen appeared, and Tony watched as he finished tinkering with the gun-shaped object.  The past-Tony finished the last of the wiring, closed a panel, and ran a soft cloth over the outside before he pushed a couple of buttons.  There was a faint hum, and a soft glow surrounded an area at the base of the barrel.

Tony could see that he was swaying slightly as he sighted along the barrel for a moment with a satisfied smile.

“All I need now is a suitable target,” he declared with satisfaction.

It was highly unfortunate that, at that moment, Steve Rogers walked into his workshop.

“Tony?” Steve called.  

Tony jumped, spun around to face the door, and automatically pulled the trigger.

A beam of light crossed the room and surrounded Steve for a two-second timespan before the gun in Tony’s hands short-circuited, and sent an arc of electricity up into, of all things, the light fittings.

Tony frowned as the screen vanished.  If it had really short circuited, there were half a hundred things that were closer than that light fitting - with himself at the top of the list - to send an arc of electricity into.  There was something seriously screwy going on here.

“You put the gun on the bench, crawled over to your couch, and passed out,” Friday explained helpfully.  “Captain Rogers woke up a few minutes later and left again after asking if you were alright.  As your life signs were stable and you had taken yourself to the couch, I said you were fine.  As his life signs were also stable, I took no further action.”

“I see.”

Tony frowned at the charred wreckage.  It was a non-fatal device that had caused Steve to be unconscious for a couple of minutes, and it just happened to look like a gun.  The only way he was going to find out what the after effects might have been was to go and find Steve.  “Where is Captain Rogers now?”

“He is in the kitchen with Sergeant Barnes, boss.”

Tony got up and headed to the kitchen.

“Boss,” Friday said hesitantly, “There appear to be anomalies with Captain Rogers’ life readings.”

Tony’s stomach fell into his boots.  “What kind of anomalies?”

“I have reviewed my data. He has not left my field of monitoring at any stage during the night, and there is no chance of anybody having changed place with him.  But he appears to be female now.”

Tony started to run, his heart pumping overtime in panic as he went.  It was probably a matter of minutes before he burst into the kitchen, but his feet were like lead, and it felt like an aeon.  “SteveI’msosorry!” he burst out as he slammed back the kitchen door.

Steve, caught completely by surprise, vaulted over the kitchen table and the bench and swept Bucky to the floor.  Time paused.

“Steve,” said Bucky after perhaps half a minute, his voice muffled, “you have lovely tits.  I wasn’t intending to view them this closely, though.”

Steve appeared from behind the kitchen bench, her face beetroot red.  “Okay.  What prompted the Mad Scientist act?”

Tony regained some of his equilibrium at the sight of a madly-blushing female Steve.  “Um, one of my fellow billionaires is expecting her first grandchild,” he explained.  “We were celebrating.”

Steve slumped down and leaned against the bench, abruptly losing all the tension she’d built up since she’d noticed her change of gender.  Beside her, Bucky regained his feet and regarded his old friend thoughtfully.  “Just like old times, eh, Stevie?” he said with a faint grin.

Steve looked at him.  “What am I going to do?”

Bucky shrugged.  “Same thing we always did whenever one of Howard’s bouts of drinking did unexpected things.  Glare at the perpetrator until he scuttles away with breathless promises to fix the problem.”

Steve frowned.  “Oh.  Yes.”

“I’m going!”  Tony exclaimed and quickly left the room to head back to his workshop, not missing the disappointed noises behind him.

He flung himself onto a stool at the bench in his workshop and pulled the cover off the gun-shaped object.  The insides were universally fried, to the point where he couldn’t even tell what the rating of the resistors had been, and the power source was dead.  Given that there was no immediately obvious way of recharging the source, this was clearly not going to be the easiest reconstruction job he had ever had.  “Alright, Friday,” he said grimly.  “Make me a circuit diagram of what’s in here, would you?”

Traceries of light appeared in the air in front of him, and Tony started to work on it.

=^o^=

There was an explosion outside.  From high up in the Avengers tower, it sounded more like a car backfiring, but Steve and Bucky knew that a noise like a backfiring car would never make it through Tony’s carefully considered noiseproofing.  “Friday, what was that?” Steve asked.

“A bomb appears to have exploded in the bar across the street, Captain Rogers,” Friday replied.  

Steve and Bucky pushed back their chairs, and headed to the elevator.  “We’re going to investigate,” Bucky said.  “Alert the authorities.  Let them know we’re headed down there.”

“Certainly, Sergeant Barnes.”

They were down in the foyer and headed towards the front door when they remembered Steve’s change of gender.   “Steve, do you want to do this?” Bucky asked gently.  “The media will have a field day with it.”

But Steve had that jut to her jaw that told Bucky exactly what she thought of the media.  “Let them,” she replied.  “This is us.  It’s just another day at the office.  If they can’t cope, that’s their problem.”

Bucky shrugged.  “Alright,” he said, and gestured to the door.  “Ladies first.”

Steve shot him a look, and went outside.

There was broken glass and shattered brick all over the road, with dazed people wandering about, as well as curious onlookers either taking photos or trying to help the confused.  Bucky could hear sirens in the distance coming closer, so he didn’t try to enter the bar.  Instead, he stood in the shadows and waited until his eyes adjusted so that he could see if anybody was alive and in need of assistance in there.  Behind him, Steve encouraged a dazed patron to sit down, and went to organize some water and first aid supplies.  Bucky was grateful that it was mid-afternoon, and the place was relatively quiet.  There was a groan from inside the bar, and Bucky, his eyes adjusted to the comparative darkness, went over to help.  

He avoided the wreckage with nimble ease as he found the survivor.  “Hi, there,” he said as he approached, moving to within the man’s visual range.  “Do you know what happened here?”

The survivor moved his head slightly, and blinked up at him.  “Um,” he said.  “What did you say?”

Bucky considered the man thoughtfully.  He was probably deaf from the blast, not to mention concussed.  Although he did not appear to be bleeding in anyway, he clearly needed medical attention.  On the other hand, there wasn’t much debris around him.

Behind him, the sirens stopped, and Bucky could hear emergency personnel getting to work.

“There was an explosion,” the man volunteered, having worked out for himself what Bucky probably wanted to know.  Temporarily deaf, he shouted,  “Robot came in and blew up.”

“What a mess,” somebody commented behind him.

Bucky turned around.  “Get a stretcher in here,” he called to them.  “This man needs medical attention.”

One of the figures in the entrance nodded, and disappeared.  The other entered gingerly.  “You local?” the other enquired.

"Yeah,” Bucky replied.  “As of yesterday afternoon, I live over the road.  You police?”

“Detective Inspector Jenny Watford,” she said.  “This man say anything?”

Bucky repeated the man’s words.

“Hmph.  You tread on much?”

“As little as possible.”

She got close enough to get a good look at his face.  “You were on the television last night,” she commented.  “Sergeant Barnes, right?”

He nodded. 

“I was told there’d be Avengers here.  Are you the only one?”

“Steve’s outside, doing first aid and crowd management,” Bucky replied.  “Tony’s trying to figure out how to fix what he did to Steve, and the others are sleeping off the jet lag.”

Watford frowned thoughtfully.  “What, exactly, did Stark do to Rogers?”

Bucky grinned a little.  “Turned him into a woman.  No idea how.”

Watford blinked.  “Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“Right.  The Amazon is Rogers.  Okay.”

Bucky looked at her thoughtfully.  “You don’t look as startled as I’d have thought.”

Watford shrugged.  “In my job, we’re only allocated a small portion of surprise each month, and I used up most of my ration on the giant chipmunk invasion last week.”

Bucky snorted a laugh, and turned his attention back to the room.  It had been a fairly normal bar before the bomb went off.  He could see the remains of a large mirror that had sat behind the bar itself, twisted metal and the distinctive smell of spirits proclaiming the kind of liquor that had sat there.  

Around the walls was the remains of some R&B blues memorabilia.  A tattered James Brown promotional concert poster, splinters embedded in it, sat in one of the only locations not directly impacted by the blast or its immediate ricochet.  Nearby, shattered on the floor, was a display case containing guitar picks.  The guy who had run the place had clearly had very particular tastes in music. 

Now, the bar itself had been reduced to splinters, and where the mirror had been was a large hole.  Interestingly, there was a passage back there that had previously been concealed by the bar.  It was brick-lined and unlit, although Bucky could see that it had electric wiring and some kind of old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs along the roof.  They looked old-fashioned, even to him.

There was broken glass and splintered wood all through the bar room.  It appeared to have ricocheted off the back wall with the explosion, if he was interpreting the patterns correctly.  As if the blast had been directional.  It must have been intended to reveal the passage.

“Why did he stay out there?” Watford asked, and Bucky had to remember that they had been talking about Steve.  “All the interesting things are in here.’

“Sure, but there’s also nothing he can sensibly do in here.  I only came in because I saw somebody was alive.  And we had to promise not to make life difficult for the local authorities before they let us come back.”

“Fair enough,” she said.  “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The stretcher arrived at that point, and Watford pointed out the path they were to take to get to the bar’s patron.

As soon as the bomb survivor was gone, they turned their attention back to the room.  Bucky moved over onto the path the paramedics had taken to get a different view of the room.

The presence of three victims of the blast had not been not been obvious from either of his previous vantage points.  The bar had curved away from the entrance in such a way that it sheltered anything standing at it.  But now he could see them.  Two of the victims had not been sheltered by anything, and their mangled remains, burned and unrecognisable, were crumpled on the floor. 

Behind the bar, on the other hand, was all that was left of the bartender.  He was largely intact up to his hips.  The rest of him was as badly burned as his customers had been.  Bucky suspected that the identities of the victims were irrelevant in this case - the interesting point would be what was at the far end of the passage.

He turned to DI Watford, pointed out the three corpses, and told her what he thought about the passage.  She frowned thoughtfully.  “Alright,” she said.  “How about you collect Captain Rogers and investigate the passage?  If it turns out to be as important as you think, it may well need a couple of super soldiers.  I’ll concern myself with the crime scene, and finding out who arranged this explosion.”

He grinned and skipped nimbly over a couple of pieces of rubble.  It was a matter of minutes to collect some weapons, torches and Steve and return.

“This passage hasn't been used in decades, by the looks of it,” Steve commented as she stepped over a piece of wreckage into the passage.  She stirred the thick layer of dust with her foot as she did so.

“I wonder what it was last used for?  And when?” Bucky agreed, rubbing his nose in the memory of spring-time hayfever.  

“Bomb shelter, maybe?” Steve said.  “Whatever it was, it has to lead to something interesting.”

“Just what I said to Inspector Watford.”  He shone his torch around the walls.  “There’s something familiar about these tiles,” he added, highlighting the pattern of beige and maroon glaze.  “I’ve seen this before.  Wish I could remember where.”

Steve gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder.

The passage ended in a wide staircase with a handrail down the middle, and they went down it without hesitation to find the concourse level of an abandoned railway station.  Bucky shone his torch over broad open spaces and rows of public seating constructed out of hardwood and wrought iron, and caught the ticketing window in his beam.  He paused on it, and shifted his beam to the side to see a network map pasted to the wall next to it.  He nudged Steve and went to have a closer look.

It was a very familiar map, and Bucky heard Steve’s breath hitch as she realised what they were looking at.  “We must be above Coxton Street Station,” she said faintly.  “It never really sank in that this is where Tony lived.”

The rich part of town.  A place that a couple of Brooklyn Boys from the 1930s had no place in being.  Bucky had a moment of shock and awe as he fully realised what kind of community they had just moved into.  Neither of them could ever properly fit into this kind of place, he felt.  They would always be aliens.  Misplaced Brooklyn Boys.  They would... 

Bucky shook it off.  “We’ve come up in the world,” he said, writing off his feeling of worthlessness as best he could.  After all, Tony was clearly the kind of man who presented a man with opportunities, if he felt you were inclined to make the best use of them.  Steve had told him so often enough.  All he needed to do now was figure out what he might possibly become.  “Come on.  We’ve got to see what’s so special about this place that somebody would build a self-destructing robot to gain access to it.”

They found another flight of stairs labelled “Platform 3/Platform 4”, and headed down onto the platform.  

“Interesting,” Steve commented.  “The platform runs at right angles to the street.  Goes right under Tony’s tower.”

They looked at each other meaningfully, and went to explore what exactly was directly under the tower.  

Neither of them were in the least bit surprised as their torch beams fell on a large, dust covered diagram filled with mysterious sigils that had been painted onto the platform.  Nor were they surprised to see a strange, yellowish-coloured egg sitting on a tripod in the middle of the diagram.  The egg was glowing faintly, lines of light wriggling and writhing around its surface.

As they watched, the lines wriggled faster, and slowly started to reorient themselves towards the upper tip of the egg.

“We need a magical expert,” Steve said flatly.

“Yes.  Do you want to stand guard, or find the expert?”

“I’ll stand guard,” Steve replied.  “The police may have their own kinds of experts, after all, and you’ve already met the officer in charge.”

“Hmm,” Bucky agreed.  “I’ll go have a chat with Inspector Watford.”

He found Watford in the street interviewing people whilst forensic experts crawled around the bar.

“We’ve found a magical artifact in a disused railway station,” he reported.  “Do you have any magical experts we could call?”

“You don’t want to involve Scarlet Witch in this?”

Bucky shook his head.  “She’s a nice enough kid, but she hasn't got the experience for this kind of thing.”

“You know your team best,” Watford shrugged.  “One of my colleagues made contact with a sorcerer he said knew his stuff like Tony Stark knows robots and weapons.  Man by the name of Stephen Strange.  I’ll give him a call and get him to come by.  Why don’t you go back and help your friend keep an eye on the thing?”   


Bucky nodded, and went back to where he’d left Steve.

Steve wasn’t there.

More than that, the energy patterns on the egg had disappeared.  

Bucky could see exactly where Steve had been standing - the dust was disturbed.  More than that, the marks in the dust suggested that Steve hadn’t just stood there.  He’d been dragged backwards for perhaps half a foot before the marks stopped.

The dust around the egg was different, too.  Everything up to a foot and a half beyond the edge of the sigil underneath the dust had gained a peculiar wave-like pattern that mirrored the pattern that the energy lines in the egg had displayed before Bucky had left.  

At least Steve hadn’t lost what little common sense he had when he’d taken the super soldier serum.  The one thing that had constantly been drummed into commando units during the war was that you did not, under any circumstances, step inside the boundaries of a magic circle.  No matter how skeptical you were.  It just wasn’t worth the risk.

A few blips of energy appeared on the egg, and he backed away.  He did not want to go diving after Steve without having any idea what he was getting himself into, and it seemed to him that being too close to that egg at the wrong moment would cause precisely that to happen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if being turned into a woman wasn't bad enough - now Steve's been kidnapped, and it's up to the others to rescue her. Assuming she doesn't rescue herself, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I feel I should acknowledge the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, and its associated game book “H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands” in writing this. Serious thanks also go to Robert E. Howard and his creation Conan the Barbarian. When it comes to adventure storytelling, I am but a humble acolyte sitting worshipfully at his feet.
> 
> 2) I was reading a book about the history of gay life in Berlin, and the author concluded with a summary of the laws regarding gay sex in the 20th Century. I was really surprised to read that Soviet Russia never criminalised it, and that communist East Germany decriminalised it before democratic West Germany did. So it gets a mention here.

The first thing Steve became aware of was the fact that his head hurt.  Or rather, that her head hurt. He had to remember that he was she at the moment.  She had to remember that he…

 

He sighed.  Gender pronouns were clearly going to be an issue for a while.  

 

But that wasn’t really what he...she… needed to be thinking about at the moment.  First, he had to do a reality check. Preferably before he revealed the fact that he had woken up to whoever had knocked him senseless in the first place.

 

So.  First things first:  comfort level. He seemed to be fairly comfortable.  He was lying in what was clearly a bed, on top of and covered with some kind of fur.  It was amazingly warm. It was also clearly the only thing keeping him warm, since her nose might as well have had icicles hanging off it.  The room was freezing. 

 

At least there were no manacles involved.

 

Her headache was fading fast, but that wasn’t really surprising.  What was surprising was that somebody had managed to hit him hard enough to knock him out in the first place, without cracking her skull.

 

Clearly, whoever had taken him prisoner cared, at least a little bit, about his comfort.  That was nice. Not being shackled to the wall of a freezing dungeon was always nice. Which was not to say that shackles would not feature in her future - but apparently there were options currently on the table, to be accepted or rejected as required.  Those would be examined as they were presented.

 

The bump on the head would clearly influence discussions, but at least it felt like discussions would actually start.  He would hate to think that he would make ultimatums without at least attempting to find out what was going on first.

 

Next.  How did he come to be there?  The last thing he remembered was exploring the cold, cold stone corridors of a mysterious citadel.  He didn’t understand how he had come to be there, since he had been standing guard over a strange-looking egg-shaped object in an abandoned railway station underneath Avengers Tower while Bucky went looking for some expert assistance.  Then, something had pulled him backwards and after a brief moment of sensory overload, his vision had cleared to reveal a stone corridor.

 

The windows of the corridor revealed nothing but a stone courtyard, and the fact that they had had no glass in them.  Which was clearly part of the reason why the place was so damned cold.

 

So.  He had explored all he knew about his current situation.  Which wasn’t a whole hell of a lot. 

 

He (she… aww, to hell with the pronouns, he decided.  He thought he was male, despite his current biology) opened his eyes.

 

The bed he lay on was, indeed, covered with furs. It was a large, four-poster job, festooned with silken drapes and heavy curtains.  He looked up through the corner of his eye to the top of the bed, and saw that the drapes and curtains were continued over the top, forming a roof.

The drapes were not closed, and he could see a curving granite wall.  He was in a circular room, it seemed, for he could see the top of a staircase by the wall, a fence surrounding three sides to prevent anybody from accidentally falling down the stairs.

 

He could also see a couple of narrow windows. They were very deep windows and, like the windows in the corridor, had no glass in them at all.

That was the extent of his vision so far. Any further information would require his moving. Given that his headache had reduced itself to a memory, he decided to risk it.  He rolled over onto her back. As this was not, apparently, a hideous mistake, he sat up.

 

There was somebody standing by one of the windows - a woman, with very pale skin (apparently naturally, rather than simply as an indication of the temperature, although her feet looked like they weren’t quite the color they were supposed to be) and black hair.  She wore some kind of fantastically minimal outfit consisting of two lengths of sheer fabric that draped beautifully and shone with a lustre that simply couldn’t be natural, covering her bottom and her… front… held together with a silver, gem-studded girdle. There were jewels in her hair and, as she turned to face him, he could see that her breasts were covered with a couple of small silver plates encrusted in yet more gems.

 

Steve abruptly realised that firstly, he was wearing a similar outfit and secondly, that it was far too cold to be swanning about wearing so little.  “Aren’t you cold?” was the first thing it occurred to him to ask.

 

She smiled a little.  “I’m the mutant offspring of a frost giant,” she replied.  “I can take temperatures much colder than this.”

 

Steve frowned thoughtfully.  “So, that’s why your toes are the wrong color, is it?”

 

Her smile grew broader.  “I’d been mostly staying in bed myself, but I thought you’d appreciate it more if you didn’t wake up to me cuddling you.”

 

Steve smiled too.  “Thank you. I probably would have reacted badly.  I don’t mind if you want to come back in.”

 

She didn’t hesitate, joining him under the covers.  “I should warn you, my feet are cold.”

 

Steve gasped as her feet made contact.  “Fair enough. I’m Steve, by the way.”

 

“Funny name for a woman.  What’s it short for?” 

 

“Steven.  And yesterday, I wasn’t female.”

 

A worried expression crossed her face.  “Okay. This is a bad precedent. I’m not supposed to be female, either.  I’m Loki, by the way.”

 

Steve’s jaw dropped for a moment.  “Loki? Brother of Thor?”

 

“Yes,” she said, and gave him a searching look.  “Okay. Steve Rogers, am I right?”

 

Steve simply nodded.

 

“I’ll get back out of bed again, if you prefer,” Loki said quietly.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve snorted.  “It’s freezing out there, and your feet are cold enough to make me think it matters, frost giant or not.  If you were under my command, I’d order you inside to be treated for frostbite.”

 

Almost shyly, Loki settled down and let Steve wrap his …. Her…. arms around her.  As Steve felt her shiver in his arms, he knew he’d done the right thing.

 

“Normally, I could shapeshift into a form that can handle the cold,” Loki admitted.  “But there’s something here that’s stopping me from doing any magic at all.”

 

Steve frowned.  “Not that I wasn’t worried before…” he said.  “Do you know where we are?”

 

“Only in a general sense.  I think we’ve been brought to the Dreamlands.  Probably to the wastelands, if the temperature and the landscape is anything to go by.  Did you see anybody when you appeared?”

 

Steve shook his head.  “Not a soul. What do you mean by Dreamlands?  I’ve never heard of it.”

 

Loki shrugged.  “It’s a magical plane of existence created by people when they are asleep.  It’s the sum of humankind’s subconscious, made flesh. It’s also the only place I can think of where a human would have the strength to strip me of my power.”

 

=^o^=

 

Dr Strange stopped several feet away from the pattern in the dust and trained his torch on the egg, as Bucky described the circumstances that had lead them there.

 

“And neither of you have stepped within the circle,” Strange clarified.

 

“No,” Bucky confirmed.  “It was one of the first things drummed into us at Camp Lehigh.  Don’t ever step inside a magic circle. If you’re lucky, you’ll come home in a bodybag.  Besides, that pattern in the dust has extended outside the circle.”

 

“Indeed,” Strange mused.  “Which suggests that the circle is either meaningless, or powerless.”

 

“You think that it might have been some kind of trick?  A trap, to get somebody within range?”

 

“It’s possible, yes,” Strange confirmed.  “Likely, even. I will need to check my books, but those sigils look like meaningless scribbles, rather than actual magic.”

 

“Could the egg have had something to do with Steve turning into a woman?  It’s right under Stark’s workshop, after all.”

 

Strange gave him a sharp look.  “You didn’t mention that before.”

 

“I thought Inspector Watford mentioned it to you when she called.”

 

Strange shook his head.  “What happened?”

 

Bucky told him.

 

“I think I’d better take a look at this gun.  The location of the egg does suggest a link. Before I do, however, I will place some wards around it to prevent anybody else getting access.”

 

Bucky stepped backwards and watched as Strange wove unusual energies into a cage around the egg, culminating in a shadow falling that hid the egg completely from view.  Then they headed back up into the bar, where Watford was watching, arms folded, as her forensics team crawled around the place. “Any luck?” she asked them.

 

“The artefact is an egg-shaped device of some power,” Strange told her.  “It is also very suspiciously located. It looks like a trap.”

 

“For what purpose?” Watford asked, eyes narrowing.  

 

“At this stage, I don’t know.”

 

“How are things here?” Bucky asked.  

 

“Too early to tell,” Watford shrugged.  “Please keep me informed about that device.”   
  
Strange nodded.  “Very well. And please let us know what you find out about the explosion.  I would be very surprised if the device was not the target.”

 

They headed back into the tower.  “Friday?” Bucky called. “Could you ask Tony if we can see him?  There’s been a development with Steve that he needs to know about.”

 

“One moment,” Friday replied.  It took her perhaps thirty seconds to come back with “Please go up.”

 

They hopped into the elevator, and were soon walking into Tony’s workshop.

 

There were several work-benches, all liberally strewn with tools, components, and random pieces of metal and plastics that meant nothing to Bucky.  A couple of partially restored historic cars stood near a heavy-duty service elevator. One of the benches had a toaster sitting on it, partially disassembled, with a collection of printed circuit boards and other unidentifiable components that Bucky was sure were never intended to be part of a toaster sticking out the side.  Another bench held a car radio encircled by an unholy mess of wires and switches plugged into, of all things, a cupcake.

 

Despite the chaos on the benches, the floor was completely clear and had been carefully swept.  

 

A battered, oil-stained couch sat against one wall, near a kitchenette.  On the other side of the kitchenette was a complicated looking apparatus containing three… things.  As Bucky watched, two of the things swivelled around to look him over and he realised that they must be robots.  Involuntarily, a smile crossed his face. No flying cars - but there were robots.

 

It was the first time that Bucky had seen the place, and he knew that this was Tony’s home.  This room, this space, more than any other, reflected Tony’s spirit.

 

“Dr Strange,” Tony said from the middle of a ring of holograms.  “What brings you into this?”   
  
“Barnes did,” Strange replied.  “He and Rogers found a magical artefact directly underneath your tower.”

 

“How did you manage that, Barnes?”   
  


Briefly, Bucky explained.  Then he added, “I don’t think Steve’s transformation was your fault.  It had to be magical, and Steve tells me that you hate magic just as much as Howard did.  So Inspector Watford recommended Dr Strange.”

 

“Have you had any luck reconstructing the gun?” Strange asked.

 

Tony shook his head.  “Gun-shaped object,” he corrected.  “There’s stuff everywhere in that case.  The circuitry doesn’t make any sense whatsoever - it looks horrendously complicated, but it’s complicated in a way that somebody who doesn’t know much about electronics makes it complicated, just so that it appears to be sophisticated and beyond anybody’s understanding.  And when it self-destructed, it ignored the laws of physics to do it.”

 

“So you also think this is magical?”

 

Tony pulled a face.  “I didn’t before, but the moment Barnes mentioned magic, it made perfect sense.  There’s no way known that I’d ever create something like this thing unless something was influencing me.”  He produced the gun-shaped object. “I assume you wanted to see this?”

 

Strange nodded, and took it from Tony.  He ran his hand over the bulbous globe at one end of it, and pulled a face of his own.  “I think you’re right, Barnes,” he said. “Tony was the conduit for the magic. This definitely links into the device you found.”

 

“So how did it get powered up?  Was it the egg?”

 

“Too early to tell,” Strange admitted.  “It is, however, a working theory. The egg is more of an egg-shaped device, after all.  It is more of a gate than anything else, a bridge. It lets power and objects through. It is particularly useful when directed.”

 

“Okay,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair.  “So, Steve was sucked through a portal into… Do we know what’s on the other side?”

 

“It is a dimension known as the Dreamlands,” Strange explained.  “It is a reflection of the collective subconscious of humankind.”

 

“Why human beings?” Bucky asked curiously.  “Are Asgardians, for example, also represented there?”

 

“No,” Strange replied.  “It is specifically for homo sapiens.  The people of Asgard have their own Dreamlands.  As do other intelligent species all over the universe.”

 

“Okay.  Dreamlands.  My next question is why was Steve sucked into the egg?  And the one after that is why does Steve need to be female.”   
  
Strange looked grim.  “I know very little about the Dreamlands, and what I do know worries me.  We are going to have to go there to find out for ourselves.”

 

=^o^=

 

Loki eventually stopped shivering, and her feet were warm again.  

 

“I’m going to have a quick look around,” Steve said, and hopped out of bed.

 

The stone floor was icy under his bare feet, but he ignored it as best he could.  He went to the window.

 

Outside, Steve could see nothing but a vast, treeless tundra.  Stretching to the horizon was an unfamiliar range of snow-capped mountain peaks.  As he looked out the window, he tried to see the ground as close to the tower he was clearly in as he could, and could see no sign of the ground at all.  What ground there was was probably hundreds of feet below.

 

He thrust arm out the window as far as it would go, and felt the wall all around it.  There was nothing more than smooth stone out there. Even if he was able to climb out the window, there was nowhere for him to climb to.  If escape was required, he wasn’t going to achieve it that way.

 

An examination of the other windows revealed a similar situation – snow-capped mountain peaks for as far as the eye could see.  No sign of any other inhabitants, either on the peaks, or in the valleys. At least, there wasn’t any signs of smoke, and no telecommunications towers, either.

 

He went to the staircase, and started down it.

 

It didn’t go very far at all before ending in a doorway.  He gingerly put his ear to it, and heard the kind of faint clanking movement that told him somebody wearing armor was standing guard out there.  There was a small grate in the door for some mysterious reason - why that should be there was unknown, since there was nothing visible through it from the other side but the staircase.

 

He looked through the grate to see another round room.  It was largely empty, save for a couple of rough-hewn stone benches and a wooden table.  But the furniture - or lack of it - wasn’t that important. What was important was the guard standing in the centre of the room.

 

The guard was wearing black enamelled armor.  The armor made him look roughly three times the diameter of Steve as he was now - and not much less when he’d been male.  It had spikes on the shoulders and elbows, horns on the helmet, and the kind of deep eye-recesses that can’t have done anything for the wearer’s visual capacity. 

 

Steve grimaced.  That thing did not look like it would be difficult to overpower.  It looked very impressive - but the designer had clearly gone so heavily overboard on the impressiveness that it would have been very impractical to fight in.

 

If that was the standard of the castle owner’s defences, then they probably had a chance after all.

 

Increasingly aware that it was actually much too cold to be wandering around clad in nothing but a couple of tea towels and way too much jewelry, he went back to bed.

 

“Did you see anything interesting?” Loki asked.

 

“Yeah,” Steve replied, and described the guard. 

 

“Please don’t underestimate it just yet,” Loki said.  “I can’t do any magic here, but I can sense something really quite sinister about that thing.  I don’t think it is human, and it may well have magical abilities that we don’t know anything about yet.”

 

“What would you suggest?” Steve asked.

 

“I’d like to meet the person who brought us here, and see what they intend.  Escape is not practical when there is nowhere to escape to, and if we simply start destroying everything in sight, then we may well wind up freezing to death, still the wrong gender and completely unable to operate any mechanism that might get us home.”

 

Steve wondered a bit about the note of hopelessness in Loki’s voice at that.  It sounded as if he didn’t expect Steve to listen to anything he said. Which was a pity, because what he said made perfect sense.  “Point taken. Let’s wait for the person in charge to turn up and tell us what’s going on.”

 

He definitely wasn’t imagining the look of surprise on Loki’s face when he agreed so easily.

 

=^o^=

 

“So, how do we go about this?” Tony asked as his armor wrapped itself around him.

 

“I can operate the egg and take us into the Dreamlands,” Strange said confidently.  “I think I can even put us down somewhere within a mile or two of where Rogers was taken.  However, I cannot guarantee anything else. Very little has been written about the Dreamlands.”

 

“Never let it be said that I have never charged into something without knowing what I was getting myself into,” Tony said confidently.  “I am a mechanic and a blacksmith. I can be useful pretty much anywhere.”

 

Bucky grinned.  “Can you build a forge?”

 

“Yep,” Tony replied.  “Have done, too. Anybody ever tell you how Iron Man got started?”

 

Bucky frowned thoughtfully.  “Not that I can remember.”

 

Strange interposed quickly, “We may well have plenty of time to exchange origin stories in the Dreamlands.  I suggest we get going.”

 

Fifteen minutes later, Bucky had talked them past the police and back down into the thankfully still deserted (and very dusty) railway station.  A couple of Dr Strange’s sorcerers had arrived and quietly confirmed what Dr Strange had suspected - the magic circle was nothing more than a meaningless scribble, containing less power than the force required to draw it.

 

Dr Strange nodded at that.  “Ready?” he asked. Tony and Bucky confirmed his question, and the three of them were abruptly somewhere else completely.  

 

=^o^=

 

The HUD vanished, and Tony suddenly became very, very aware that he was wearing a great deal of sheet metal.  And unlike the lightweight titanium alloy it had been before, it was now, very definitely, made of steel. The sheer weight of what he was now wearing took his breath away.

 

Thankfully, he was on a horse.

 

Who the bare torso in front of him belonged to, however, was a mystery.

 

And what had happened to Friday?  Not to mention the others.

 

It was a shapely torso, he had to admit.

 

“Okay,” he said.  “What happened?”

 

“Boss?” said Friday, her voice coming, strangely, from the torso in front of him.  “I appear to be… organic.”

 

“Friday?”

 

The torso turned slightly to look at him.  

 

Tony had never given Friday even the semblance of a physical form, so the sight of his AI, completely naked (although from the waist down it really didn’t matter in the slightest, since he now realised that she was now a centaur and that he was on her back), made him feel almost...proud.  She was a beautiful woman.

 

“Wow,” he said, at a loss for anything more intelligent to say.  “You’re lovely.”

 

She blinked at him in surprise.  “Thank you. Why are you wearing steel?  You are heavier than you were before. And you are carrying a sword.  Not guns.”   
  


Tony frowned, and looked down.  He was, indeed, armed with a sword.  A bloody great broadsword. “I have never used one of these before in my life,” he said, automatically shifting his position slightly into a more acceptable horse-riding position.  “Although at least I know how to ride a horse.”

 

There was a snort from beside him.  “Gotta be some advantage to being filthy rich,” Bucky said.

 

Tony stared at him.  “You…” he said.

 

Bucky’s appearance took his breath away, even more than the armour did.  If one considered fur in the same league as clothing - which when he looked at Bucky he did - Bucky was wearing even less than the basically-naked Friday was.

 

He was wearing boots made of fur, and a fur loincloth.  There was a broadsword belted to his waist, too, and Tony got a glimpse of daggers - one sheathed in each of his boots.  That was it. Legs, and anything from the waist up, was nothing more than bare flesh. Combined with his long, dark hair (which seemed even longer now), Tony found himself remembering the images of Conan the Barbarian that he’d glimpsed as a youth, back in the 1980s.  

 

Bucky was just as muscular as Conan had always been drawn, and Tony wondered how fair it was that Bucky got to look that ripped even when he wasn’t flexing his muscles.  It had to be a super-soldier thing, he decided, since every time he saw Steve without a shirt on, it was the same. Even when he was completely relaxed. Tony could produce a six-pack like that, if he flexed his muscles, but this was something that was simply there, no flexing required.

 

“I am going to make sure you have an outfit like that when we get home,” Tony decided, speaking out loud before he could stop himself.

 

Bucky raised his eyebrows in surprise, and looked down at himself.  He frowned. “Why aren’t I cold?” he asked. “This is practically naked, even for a Winter Soldier.”

 

That was the point when Tony realised that it was, in fact, bitterly cold.  

 

“So they didn’t used to strip you naked and shove you out into the snow, then?”  Tony asked, his mouth on autopilot as he attempted to process Bucky’s new look (and his new and completely unexpected desire to run his hands all over his torso.).  “They didn’t try to turn you into Conan the Barbarian?”

 

Bucky shook his head.  “I remember overhearing one handler talking about doing just that, right back in the beginning, but he was gay, and the others wound up murdering him.”  Bucky frowned thoughtfully. “Strangely enough, the non-Hydra KGB agents he’d worked with mourned him. They knew he was gay and they mourned his loss anyway.  I really didn’t expect that.”

 

“Really?” asked Dr Strange, and all three of them turned in surprise to see him there, dressed much as he always had been - with the sole exception of the cloak, which had been transformed into a pair of large red wings  “I’d have thought the Soviets would have been just as homophobic as everybody else,” and Tony and Friday nodded in agreement.

 

“I did too,” Bucky agreed.  “But they seemed to be much more relaxed about it.  No idea why.”

 

That sparked a general discussion that was only temporarily interrupted when Dr Strange flew up into the air to get their bearings.

 

“There’s a castle over that way,” he reported, pointing, “and a path that seems to be headed that way.  It’s the only sign of intelligent life that I can see in any direction.”

 

“Well, let’s go then,” Tony said.  “It’s as good a place to start as any.”

 

All conversation stopped as the trail dipped into a ravine.  Interested and absorbing conversation was fine when one was completely sure of one’s environment - but narrow winding pathways along sheer drops that terminated abruptly on jagged rocks and pinnacles of ice half a mile below them was not the kind of environment that encouraged such a reckless disregard for one’s own safety.  They abandoned all chatter about the unlikeliness of communists being measurably less homophobic than people in democratic and fascist societies in favour of watching where they were putting their feet.

 

Somewhere, a couple of hundred feet down the second ravine that they had to traverse, Tony got the distinct impression that they were being watched.  A feeling of nameless dread crawled down his spine - but he couldn’t be sure. After all, there were ice crystals forming inside his armour, and it could just as easily have been a droplet of melting ice running down his back.  There might have been a thick layer of padding between the sheet metal he was wearing on the outside and his bare skin - but padding meant nothing when one was wearing sheet metal in sub-zero temperatures.

 

=^o^=

 

Booted footsteps rang on the stone stairs. 

 

“We can’t climb out of bed without our toes changing colour,” Loki commented.  “I’m jealous.”

 

“So am I,” Steve admitted with a faint smile.  “It sounds like the person in charge is coming.”

 

Loki wriggled around until she was facing towards the stairwell, and Steve draped his arm over her posessively.  They watched as a tall, middle-aged, skinny sort of fellow in dark purple embroidered robes made of some fabric resembling wool emerged. He carried a silver staff that had an absurdly large stone of an oddly disturbing dark green colour on top, and he wore a silver skull cap.

 

They eyed him without moving.

 

He ran his eyes over them with a satisfied and yet strangely detached attitude. “Get out of bed,” he ordered.

 

“Why?” Steve demanded. “What are we doing here?”

 

“You have been selected to be the bearer of The Great Old One Glhuun’s triumphant return,” he said. 

 

“And if we refuse?” Loki asked.

 

The corner of his mouth twitched, and they heard the distinct jingling sound of something metal moving towards them. The source of the noise came closer, and when the first of two black horned helmets appeared in the stairwell, their eyes widened.

 

The guards that took up their positions on either side of the man stood head and shoulders above him. As he clearly stood head and shoulders above them, they both knew that these things were at least giants.

 

Not that Steve could see exactly what they were – the helmets included face masks, and she could see no sign of eyes within. Beneath the helmets was armour that completely covered them, jointed in such a way that made her think vaguely of Ultron.  Through the grate on the door, this thing had seemed faintly comical. Now that he had a closer view of the thing, it didn’t look nearly so funny.

 

“You have no say in the matter,” the man said quietly. “If you are suitable, you will bear Glhuun’s children. Then you will die.”

 

“And if we are not suitable?”

 

“You will die. Get out of bed.”

 

Silently, they climbed out and stood in front of him.  His eyes raked over them: calm and impersonal - like they were brood sows, to be slaughtered without care or feeling if they failed to meet expectations.  Steve was astonished when she felt a mild sense of relief when he nodded once.

 

“You will do.  You will both do.  I will bring you warm robes to wear when I return for you.”

 

With that, the man turned and left, his giant armoured guards trailing after him.  Steve and Loki climbed back into bed again.

 

Loki immediately wrapped his arms around Steve and buried his face in Steve’s shoulder.  “We’re in deep trouble,” he said, and Steve could feel that he was shaking.

 

“Explain?” he asked.

 

“Glhuun is one of the Great Old Ones,” Loki replied.  “It predates intelligent life in the universe, had nothing to do with its creation, and sees even the Asgard as little more than ants.  It usually manifests in a statue of Dionysius, and it is known as the Corrupter of Flesh.”

 

Steve frowned.  “That explains what it would want with us.  I’m a super soldier, you’re a god. We’ve both got a healing factor that can take pretty much anything.  What do you think what’s his face will get out of it?”

 

Loki sighed.  “Probably control over the offspring.  Did you see any trace of any human beings in this place at all?”

 

Steve shook his head.  “The first humanoids I’ve seen apart from the sorcerer is those two black armored guards.”

 

“Those aren’t human,” Loki said definitely.

 

“Then what are they?”

 

“Spirits.  Something formless, contained within physical form by the armor.  They are a sign of the amount of power that that sorcerer already has - to be able to maintain minions like those things is very worrying.”

 

“What can we do?”

 

“I don’t know.  But talking isn’t going to be an option, I’m afraid.”

 

“Well, let’s at least wait until he comes back with those robes he mentioned before we try anything,” Steve decided.  “It’s still freezing.”

 

=^o^=

 

They were part way up the other side of the ravine when Bucky felt the world spiralling away from him.  He stopped walking and grabbed hold of a small but conveniently located rocky outcrop as his view of the path and Tony (in his ridiculously shiny armor with the bright red surcoat.  Standing next to Tony made Bucky feel more like a barbarian than ever.).

 

“Barnes?” he heard Strange ask faintly.  “Are you alright?”

 

He tried to speak, but he couldn’t manage more than a grunt.  

 

The world around him fell away, to be replaced by the all-too-familiar view of a laboratory full of familiar looking men in white coats (No, he thought, they’re dead.  They’re all dead! I killed them myself!) surrounded by benches, fancy measuring devices that he only knew measured things because the scientists never bothered to watch their mouths when he was around, and security guards.  Who were also all dead. Because, once again, he distinctly remembered killing them.

 

He realised that he was sitting in a chair, and went to stand up.

 

He was strapped down.  

 

He looked down at the chair he was sitting in, and felt his heart start to pound, and his breath quicken in panic.  It wasn’t just a chair. It was The Chair. The one they used to erase his memory.

 

“Hnh,” said one of the scientists, looking over at him as he started to struggle.  “It’s never done that before.”

 

The other scientists also looked his way.  As did the security guards.

 

“It must be overdue for a reset,” another scientist commented, and the others nodded their agreement.

 

Bucky felt one of his wrists starting to gain more movement, and realised that he was starting to work one of the straps loose.  He put more effort into his struggles. 

 

Unfortunately, one of the security guards noticed the loosening strap.  He strode over, raised his rifle and, before Bucky could do anything to prevent him, used it to club him roughly on the side of the head.

 

Pain and anger shot through him as his vision went wonky, and nausea coiled in the pit of his stomach.  His arms refused to cooperate and his struggles with the straps ceased.

 

Dimly, he heard one of the scientists say mildly “What did you do that for?”

 

“The straps were starting to give way,” the security guard replied casually.

 

“The straps have never given way before.  They would have held this time, too.”

 

“Not my job to take chances like that,” the guard shrugged.  “Gotta keep you lot safe. That’s what we’re here for.”

 

Dimly, Bucky recalled this incident.  Last time he’d been here, with these people, the guard had not been so observant, or so ready to do his job.  He’d broken loose, killed everybody in the room, and had made it almost as far as the front door to the base before a man with a tranq gun had taken him down.  It hadn’t delayed the Treatment for more than a few hours - Hydra had scientists everywhere, and they always made sure that there were more than just scientists who were well trained in the use of The Chair.  But this? This hadn’t happened.

 

Terror rose in his stomach, making the nausea even worse.  He was going to get wiped again. He was going to forget everything that had happened to him, ever.  He was going to forget Steve, his idiot friend with no sense of self-preservation. He was going to forget Tony, too, who was not just Howard’s son, but so far had shown himself to be everything that Howard had secretly wanted to be, but had never quite managed.

 

He was going to forget Shuri, who had removed the triggers from his brain.  And T’Challa, who had let him live in the most advanced and secretive society the planet had ever seen. 

 

“No,” he whispered drunkenly.  “No!”

 

A scientist loomed in front of him, lab coat curiously shiny.  “Barnes?” he asked, and Bucky blinked slightly. Hydra scientists were usually clean shaven.  This one had a goatee. “Are you alright?”

 

“No,” he said, “Don’t…  don’t do it!”

 

“Some kind of flashback,” a voice beside him said, and Bucky felt a gust of wind.  “Barnes, can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me.”   
  


Reluctantly, Bucky nodded.

 

“You are having some kind of dream,” the first voice said, realising what his companion was thinking.  “Whatever you think you’re seeing, it’s not real. You are standing on a narrow pathway in a very cold climate.”

 

Bucky frowned.  Now the scientist mentioned it, the air was surprisingly frigid, although the cold didn’t seem to affect him.

 

And the chair… that felt wrong, too.  It was hard, yes, and rough, but it was the wrong kind of rough.  It was the rough of stone, not the rough of wood.

 

The Hydra laboratory faded away, and was replaced by the ravine.  He shook his head sharply, clearing the last of the cobwebs away. 

 

“Barnes?” Tony asked, kneeling next to him.  “Are you with us?”

 

“Yeah,” Bucky replied, his voice shaky.  He paused and strengthened it. “I am now.” 

 

“Were you seeing something else?” Dr Strange asked.

 

Bucky nodded.  “Yeah. I was back in a Hydra lab, strapped in a chair.”

 

As Bucky watched, Tony’s face went white.  

 

“It’s an old memory.  Originally, I broke free from the chair and killed half the people in the base before they tranqed me and wiped me.  This time, though, one of the guards actually did his fucking job properly and belted me before I could get free.”

 

“A nightmare was altered to make it worse,” Strange said thoughtfully, stroking his beard.  “I don’t think we’re alone here.”

 

Bucky and Tony exchanged glances.  “What do you think is with us?”

 

Before Strange could answer, Friday kicked something with her hind feet.  They all heard her hooves connect, and something fall into the ravine. 

 

“Something brushed my backside,” she said apologetically.  “I’m afraid my current programming has some subroutines that I was not aware of.”

 

Tony nodded, and rested his hand on her back.  “It’s alright. In living beings, it’s called instinct.  And I think you did right. I think you kicked whatever it was that attacked Barnes.”

 

She gave him a grateful look.  “Thanks, Boss.”

 

“Thank you, Friday,” Barnes said.  “It sounds like there are invisible hostile creatures here, and we should probably get moving before any more of them find us.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are strangers in a strange land, trying to rescue their friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special acknowledgements for this chapter go to the late, great Terry Pratchett.

The citadel they were aiming for lay in front of them.  It was an imposingly large structure constructed of basalt, and its front gate was firmly shut.  The quartet stared at it as they approached. 

 

It was a grim-looking edifice, its blackness making it look even more impregnable than it would have otherwise.  The towers that stuck up from its walls at irregular intervals only added to the impression that it had teeth that would not hesitate to gobble up anything in the local area.

 

The fact that the local area held no other sign of intelligent life - or unintelligent life, for that matter - only added to the predatory impression the castle gave out.

 

“So,” Bucky asked, dismissing his recent waking nightmare with a shudder.  “Do we knock?”   
  


“No knocker,” Tony pointed out reasonably.

 

“There is no doorbell, either,” Friday added.  “Would anybody hear a knock?”

 

Dr Strange shrugged.  “I couldn’t see any signs of life when I did a flyby earlier.  And there was a thick layer of dust around the main entrance, too.”

 

“So, if anybody is at home, they haven’t used the front door,” Bucky said.  “Could you open it, if you flew inside?”   
  


“I’ll see,” Strange replied.  He shot into the air, the powerful downdraft generated by his wings buffeting them.  Ten minutes later, the drawbridge hadn’t shifted, and Strange returned. “The mechanism is rusted solid,” he reported.  

 

“If anybody’s home, then, they must be using another entrance,” Tony surmised, and the others nodded.  They started to walk around the citadel.

 

The scenery surrounding the castle was as uniformly cold and bleak as the castle itself.  The largest piece of foliage they had come across to date only came up to their knees, and it was more about wood and spikes than it was about leaves.  Bucky had looked around carefully since he appeared, and he had eventually spotted the mosses and tiny flowering plants growing in cracks and crevices. Even Siberia hadn’t been as bleak and lifeless as this place.

 

It took them a considerable amount of time before they found the back entrance, and there was little sign that it had been used much, either, although there were at least the ruts of a cart track there that suggested that it had actually been in use at one time or other. 

 

“You know,” Strange said thoughtfully as they stared at the second closed and rusty door.  “I don’t think that front entrance has ever been used.”

 

“Why build a door if you’re never going to use it?”  Bucky asked reasonably. He tried the door. “This feels like it’s rusted shut, too,” he added.

 

“In the Dreamlands?  It’s probably there because the human subconscious insists that buildings have doors,” Strange shrugged.

 

“Tombs tend not to have doors,” Tony pointed out.

 

“Yeah, they do,” Bucky contradicted.  “Just, not obvious ones. And they aren’t designed to be opened.  They don’t have door knobs, or hinges, like this door does.” 

 

He poised himself, and delivered a hard kick to a key point on the door.  It slammed open with a crash that reverberated around them.

 

“Knock knock,” Tony said drily.  “Is anybody home?”

 

Bucky stepped back and gestured grandly for the others to proceed him.  

 

Moments later, he was grateful that he did, because light filled the doorway as the trio walked through it, and Tony and Strange changed shape.  Friday, strangely, did not. Although she did gain some garments.

 

Thoughtfully, Bucky looked around and spotted the one thing they hadn’t thought to look for before:  a small hole in the wall with an iron grate over it. He examined the grate and, with one mighty heave that made his shoulder muscles stand out even more than usual, pulled it off.  

 

Wriggling through the hole was a tight fit, and he suspected that he might have had some change in shape when he was brought to the Dreamlands, because it was a tighter fit than it should have been.  Were his shoulders broader than they were before? He wasn’t entirely sure.

 

But he got in, and when he stood up - still male - and dusted himself off, he took stock of the other three.

 

The first thing that crossed his mind was that, no matter how hot Tony had been as a male, as a female she blew him away.  She was gorgeous. Her armour had changed from sensible, straight forward plate armour to something consisting of a couple of pieces of steel covering not much more of her breasts (large enough, Bucky noticed, to be at least a minor hindrance to her fighting style) than either of the other two had been granted, and a couple of short flaps of leather with steel discs sewn onto them in an overlapping manner covering her genitals.  As armour, it was ridiculous. But at least she kept her sword. 

 

Dr Strange was wearing something that Bucky could only think of as two pieces of gauze and a great deal of jewelry.  The sorcerer had also become an amazingly beautiful woman, but there was something distinctly aloof about her, something that promised madness and death should a man make an attempt on her.

 

The change that aroused the greatest emotion, however, was the one he experienced when he turned to look at Friday.

 

Friday as a naked centaur was fine.  From the waist up she was a beautiful woman, and if she’d been human from the waist down as well, he’d probably have made a pass at her, even if it was only to keep in practice.  

 

But this?  This was the centaur given a...breast covering… of sorts… 

 

And a bridle.  

 

She was wearing a bridle.

 

“Friday?” he asked gently.  “Are you alright?”

 

Friday looked confused for a moment.  She’d seen what had happened to the other two, and the alterations to her own appearance clearly hadn’t sunk in yet.  She got as far as “yeshh ughn foiee” before the fact that something had appeared in her mouth sunk in. Then, her hands raised to her head, and she realised what had appeared on her head.

 

Bucky hadn’t spent any time with horses, so he had no idea how long it took for a human to remove a bridle.  He was pretty sure it took longer than it took Friday to remove hers.

 

She stared at the thing in her hands for a long moment, her face getting steadily more livid as she looked at it.  

 

The other two looked at it, too - Strange in horror, and Tony in fury.

 

“They put my baby girl in a bridle,” Tony growled, drawing her sword.  “Somebody is going to die for this!”

 

=^o^=

 

“Does anybody know you’re missing?” Loki asked.

 

“Bucky should find out soon, if he hasn’t already.  But we were in a disused railway station in Manhattan.  How’s he going to make it from there to here?”

 

“What were you doing before you got brought here?”

 

Steve shrugged.  “Guarding an object that was in the middle of a magic circle.  It was right underneath Stark Tower, and I’d been wondering if it had had anything to do with my suddenly being female.  Bucky was going looking for somebody who knew something about magic.”

  
“Hopefully, he’ll find Dr Strange,” Loki replied.  “He’s a Master Sorcerer on Midgard, and really rather capable.  If anybody could find us, it would be him.” She lay her head on Steve’s shoulder, snuggled into her, and sighed.  “I’m starting to like this whole being female thing,” she admitted. “I think I’ll stay this shape for a while.”

 

“Really?” Steve said, automatically caressing Loki’s shoulder.  “I think I’d rather be my own gender again.”

 

“How come?”

 

“This body is strong and healthy and all that, but… it feels wrong.  It’s balanced wrong. It feels like it could do a whole lot more than my male body could, lots of different things, too.  But relearning all that was hard enough the first time. If I stay female, I’ll have to relearn things all over again. I don’t want to.”

 

“Sounds reasonable.  I wouldn’t mind finding out what it’s like to cuddle the male you,” Loki replied with a faint smile.

 

“I wouldn’t mind finding out, too,” Steve admitted, and felt shocked.

 

They lay like that for a while.  Finally, Steve sighed. “We need a plan,” she said.

 

Loki nodded.  “Agreed. What we know so far is that it is too cold for us to break out of here like this, and we don’t yet have access to warm clothing.”

 

“We also know that the sorcerer is just human enough to bring us something warm to wear, and that he’ll probably put us right back in here when we’ve been impregnated by Gloon.”

 

“Glhuun,” Loki corrected automatically, noting the slight tone of hysteria that had entered Steve’s voice when he mentioned being impregnated.  Loki understood that sentiment - becoming pregnant to a Great Old One was not something she cared to experience, either.

 

“Does it matter?”

 

Loki sighed.  “Probably not.  But it’s the principle of the thing!”

 

Steve laughed and kissed the top of Loki’s head.  “You sound like Tony.”

 

Loki chuckled.  “Tony usually knows what he’s talking about.”

 

Steve’s good humour faded.  “Tony makes mistakes.”

 

“We all make mistakes,” Loki replied reasonably.  “When you’ve got great power, and great intelligence, the mistakes tend to be bigger.  That’s all.”

 

“Tony’s mistakes cost thousands of lives!”

 

Loki didn’t hesitate.  “How many people have you killed?  Do you know?”

 

Steve jumped out of bed in shock, and backed away from the bed.  “Loki,” he said, sounding as shaken as he felt. 

 

Loki sat up.  “Do you really need me to remind you of them?” she asked gently.

 

After a long moment, Steve shook his head.  “No. I don’t… I don’t want to be reminded of them.”  

 

“You’re a warrior,” Loki reminded him quietly.  “Sooner or later, warriors kill people. It’s inevitable.”

 

“I wasn’t raised that way,” Steve said, turning to look out the window.  “I was raised a good Christian. I was raised to think that killing is wrong.”

 

“And yet you became a warrior,” she said.  “You let them transform you into a super soldier.  You spent months rampaging through Europe, killing people.”

 

“Like a butcher,” Steve said bitterly.

 

“Like a warrior,” Loki corrected.  “You can talk about protecting people to your heart’s content, Steve, but sooner or later, being a soldier - a warrior - comes down to killing people.”

 

“Killing people is still wrong,” Steve replied stubbornly.  “Anybody who ever meant anything to me taught me that. Human beings aren’t meant to treat each other like that.  Religion taught us that, and intelligence backed it up. People working together for the greater good have always done better than people fighting each other.  I might not have known that before the second war started, but I know it now.”

 

There was a rustle and creak from the bed behind him, and moments later Loki wrapped her arms around his waist.  Her waist.

 

“We should have had each other’s lives,” Loki commented.  “I’d much rather have grown up in a culture where intelligence brought better results than fighting.”

 

Steve winced.  “I never really learned how to do that,” he admitted.

 

“You’d have done well in Asgard.”

 

“With bad chronic asthma and heart problems?  Half the size I am now?”

 

Loki chuckled.  “Asgard healing magic can perform miracles.  And a small warrior? Anybody who has ever had to fight dwarves knows how nasty that can be.”

 

Steve glanced down at her.  “Dwarves? Really?”

 

Loki grinned at him.  “They have a saying. When his hands are higher than your head, his groin is level with your teeth.”

 

Steve pulled himself together and turned around to cuddle Loki.  “Okay. We need to think this through. I think if we wait for that sorcerer to come back with warm clothes, we aren’t going to stand much of a chance.  I think we need to escape now and try to find our way back home before we get anywhere near Gloon. Or whatever his name is. And hope like hell that we find something warm to wear on our way out.”

 

=^o^=

 

They were in the kitchens.  The stone surrounding them was as cold and black as the rest of the castle, but it didn’t take much imagination for Bucky to fill the gigantic fireplaces with glowing hot coals and the corpse of some animal or other, being rotated jerkily by some unfortunate lowlife.

 

The rest of the place would be equally full of heat and people and red glowing coals: somebody stirring broth on a stove, somebody else carefully skinning a bird to be roasted in the ovens embedded in the walls, lots of shouting, plenty of abuse.  Maybe even a bit of laughter here and there.

 

This place didn’t look like it encouraged laughter.

 

“Alright,” Tony said firmly as they headed through the kitchens of the citadel.  “Who the hell decided that a steel bikini was a good idea?”

 

“You look incredible,” Bucky assured her.

 

“I don’t care how hot you are,” Tony growled, her temper still simmering, “If you produce a pork sword instead of warm clothes, I’ll shove six feet of cold hard steel right up your arse.”

 

“Would you welcome a pork sword after you’re warm again?” Bucky asked with a grin, trying not to let his face show how happy he was to hear that Tony thought he was hot.

 

“Oh, god, I’d do anything you like for warm clothes,” Tony said with a groan.  “It’s fucking freezing!”

 

Bucky looked Tony and Strange up and down.  “You two do look a bit blue around the edges.  I think we need to change tactics. Dr Strange, could you locate any areas of activity?”

 

“What did you have in mind?” Strange asked.

 

“We need to find a room that’s small enough to be kept warm, preferably without people there.” Bucky told them.  “The guard quarters would be good, if we can find them. There’s plenty of firewood in here that we can take over there.  A warm, defensible room can then be used as a base of operations, and we can explore this place from there. We might even be able to find you two some clothes.”

 

The others nodded thoughtfully.  

 

“There were two towers on either side of the main entrance,” Strange told them.  “They’d be a good place to start looking.”

 

“It makes sense,” Tony agreed.  “Let’s head there now and find out.”

 

Friday was wandering around the kitchen, hooves clip-clopping on the flagstone floor.  Now, she picked up a pile of wood and a rope that she’d made out of her bridle, and tied the wood up.  “I can carry the most wood,” she volunteered. “If we can sling it across my back.”

 

Tony looked around and soon found more rope.  “Good girl,” he said approvingly as he bundled more firewood together.  Before long, they had a good load of wood fastened to Friday’s back, and they headed out of the kitchen and into the long, open courtyard.

 

It was a plain basalt courtyard, lined with plain basalt buildings, each separate from the other.  “God, this place is bleak,” Tony commented. “It needs some trees. Flowers. A fountain. Rebuilding in granite.”  

 

Bucky knew what he meant.  Instead of wealth, joy, and life, there was nothing.  Not even moss covered the basalt walls. The bleakness of the stone was punctuated only by doors hewn mostly from rough wooden planks and a single, lonely watering trough for horses that contained only stagnant water and ice.

 

“I wonder what kind of bacteria lives in that water?” Dr Strange wondered out loud as they passed it, and Tony remembered that he’d been a medical doctor before he’d taken up sorcery.

 

“Probably nothing good,” Tony replied.

 

“Or familiar,” Strange agreed.  “It makes me wish I had a micro lab here.  I’d love to find out.”

 

Tony shuddered slightly at the thought.  “If we wind up with infected wounds, you’ll probably find out the hard way,” he said.

 

“That is an excitement I can live without, thanks,” Strange said firmly, and Tony grinned.

 

“Are we sure we’re in the right place?” Bucky asked.  “This place so far seems deserted. There haven’t even been any footprints here that we haven’t made.”  Then he remembered his nightmare, and how it had finished when Friday had kicked the creature responsible into the ravine.  “Nightmares either,” he added.

 

“It’s the only place visible in any direction that was made by intelligent beings,” Strange shrugged.   
  


“Maybe you will be able to see something from the top of one of these towers,” Friday suggested as they approached the twin towers on either side of the main gate.

 

At first sight the towers looked identical.  But as they got closer, they realised that one had a simple wooden door like most of the other doors that led off the courtyard, whilst the other one had a sturdy iron grate.  When they got close enough to see through it, they realised that this had to be the citadel’s main prison. 

 

The prison tower had a main room on the ground floor that was lined with benches and shackles, whilst in the middle was a large wooden table.  The fireplace in that room had several hooks from which were hung instruments of torture. 

 

Bucky snorted derisively.  “That lot’s probably for show,” he commented.

 

“I wouldn’t want them used on me,” Friday said uncomfortably.

 

“Oh, you’d be properly traumatised if they were used on you,” Bucky agreed, “But there are much, much nastier things that an experienced torturer can do to you without needing those things.”

 

This produced an uncomfortable silence.  To distract himself from his own memories, Bucky glanced over at Tony.  Tony had wrapped her arms around her torso at the sight of the instruments, and had turned her attention to the door of the other tower.  Abruptly, Bucky remembered what Steve had told him about Tony’s experiences at the hands of terrorists, and wondered if this newly discovered protective streak would last once Tony was male again.  Now, the others turned as they heard the door behind them creak open. 

 

“It wasn’t locked,” Tony told them.  She drew her sword and, holding it in front of her like she actually knew how to use it, stepped inside.  Bucky darted forward so that he was right behind her, his own sword raised and ready to protect her (‘does she actually know how to use a sword?’  He wondered. ‘Do I?’). The others trailed in after them as they failed to hear any sounds of violence.

 

The other tower’s ground floor had a table in the centre, a fireplace, and a number of chairs scattered around.  Next to the door was a weapons rack containing pikes, and another one containing swords. On the other side was shelving, containing helms - and padded coats designed to be worn under armour.

 

The walls were still basalt, but there was a basket containing chopped wood, kindling, and a flint next to the fireplace.  The chairs and table were roughly carved out of wood, but they had been worn smooth with use, and there were thin pads stuffed with straw on the chairs. 

 

Glancing over at Tony, he saw that his eyes had widened at the sight of the shelf with its padding and he stared hungrily at it.  Tony touched Strange’s arm gently and pointed out the shelf. Bucky started up the stairs to the second floor as they lunged for the shelf.  “Watch the door,” he told Friday, who nodded.

 

The sound of the two ex-men pulling warm clothes on rustled behind him as he climbed up to check the second floor.  Fortunately, they were the only sounds to be heard as he climbed - all four of the tower’s floors were empty of life.

 

The second and third floors both consisted of rows of bunk beds, with a fireplace against one wall and a table in the centre.  Bucky counted beds enough for fifty people.

 

The top floor must have been for the commander of the garrison, however.  It had a much larger bed resting against one wall, surrounded by curtains.  A desk leaned against another wall, with shelving next to it containing a dusty jar and some rusty metal nibs.  

 

He glanced through the windows, and noticed that the rest of the citadel - although it had been perfectly visible from the ground- was strangely absent from the windows of the tower they were in.  Even the other tower was completely invisible. It was impossible to see if there was anybody in the upper levels of the prison tower.

 

Thoughtfully, he descended the ground floor again where he told Strange what he’d failed to see from the tower.

 

“The Dreamlands are a peculiar place,” Strange commented.  “It’s the one thing you can really, truly guarantee - things are not as you would expect them to be.”

 

“That means that Steve might not actually be here,” Tony said.  “There might be other signs of civilisation out there that we simply can’t see, and won’t see until we’re right on top of them.”

 

“It also means that we’re going to have to explore the citadel as thoroughly as possible,” Friday agreed.  “I suggest we start as soon as possible - with the tower next door.”

 

Bucky nodded slowly.  “And continue with any other tower that we can see from the outside,” he agreed.  

 

Strange looked up from where he was building a fire in the fireplace.  “Friday, will you be able to go up stairs?”

 

Friday looked puzzled.  “Why shouldn’t I?”

 

“Horses and cows are famed for not being able to climb stairs,” Strange replied.  “You are a horse from the waist down - I’d rather know if this is true now, than later.”

 

Friday looked towards the stairs, and frowned thoughtfully.  “Alright. I’ll see.”

 

Two steps up the stairs, her hind quarters not even on the stairs yet, she stumbled and nearly fell.  Tony rushed over and steadied her. 

 

“I think that’s a no,” Tony commented, and Friday, shaken, agreed.

 

“I never realised how important it was to be able to see my feet,” she said, returning to the centre of the room.

 

“Let’s see what’s in that prison tower,” Bucky said.  “I’d hate to think that Steve was right there and we could have got him out any time.”

 

Tony nodded her agreement.  “Friday, stay by the door,” she instructed.  “Shout if you see anything.”

 

Friday nodded, and they trooped out.

 

=^o^=

 

Steve returned up the stairs.  “The guard is still there,” he reported quietly.  

 

Loki nodded.  “If we can blind it, we should be able to run past it,” she replied.  “One of these curtains would be best. If we can get it caught on the spikes, it should take ages for it to fight its way free.”

 

“Let’s get a couple more curtains down, too,” Steve suggested.  “We can wrap them around ourselves.”

 

Loki smacked herself on the forehead.  “Why didn’t I think of that?” she demanded.  “I’ve been doing this sort of thing with Thor for centuries now!  One adventure in the Dreamlands, though, and I turn into a damsel in distress.”

 

Steve wrapped an arm around Loki’s shoulder.  “We’ve both been thinking strangely,” he agreed.  “I’m normally better at basic problem solving than this, too.”

 

Loki looked disgusted.  “It must be the Dreamlands.  We’ve been dressed up as damsels in distress, and therefore, that’s what the Dreamlands turns us into.”

 

Steve was disturbed.  “Does this mean we are in danger of screaming and running away from stupid little problems if we don’t keep our guard up?”

 

Loki nodded.  “I’m afraid so.  I’m also now wondering if it’s genuinely your pretty face that makes me want to cuddle you all the time, if it’s somebody’s sick fantasy, or if it’s just the cold.”

 

“Well, the cold is a pretty major problem,” Steve noted, dodging the other two suggestions altogether.  “It’s a good reason to wrap your arms around me whenever you can. I think we’re going to have to wait and see on that one.”  He actually hoped that it wasn’t a side effect of the Dreamlands. Female Loki was exactly the right size and shape to be cuddled, and Steve knew already that it would be even better if he was male again.

 

They wrapped themselves up in the curtains as though they’d been togas, and turned to examine the lock on the door.

 

=^o^=

 

By unspoken agreement, Bucky went first up the stairs of the prison tower, and Tony brought up the rear.  Bucky may not have used a six-foot broadsword before, but he was by far the best and most experienced at combat with blades of all of them.  Strange simply kept his senses peeled and his hands ready for action.

 

The second floor, for the most part, consisted of a landing and a large cell complete with manacles, chains, and heavy iron bars.  It was empty, both of people and furniture. Dust covered everything.

 

The third floor, however, was clearly occupied.  The sound of metal clanking against metal as something large and heavy stomped towards the staircase sounded above them.  Tony and Bucky drew their swords and stood ready as Strange stepped back and started gathering a spell together.

 

Footsteps quickly mounted the staircase, and Tony got a good look at black armour with spikes on the ankles and running up the legs to the knees as the creature descended.  He said nothing as their new adversary descended, but his expression, he knew, said everything.

 

He glanced over at Bucky, and saw his own expression mirrored on Bucky’s face.  This guy, whoever he was, was clearly some kind of jerk. And not a particularly competent one.

 

Before the armour descended below knee level, however, more noise came from above.  A door crashed open, and non-armoured footsteps ran across the floor. The armour turned and went to run upwards.

 

“Come on,” Bucky said tersely, and followed the armour up the stairs.  Tony and Strange charged after him.

 

When they got there, they saw two women - one of them Steve - trying to throw a piece of fabric over the creature’s head.  

 

When Tony realised what Steve was wearing, he remembered what Friday had suddenly been wearing when she’d entered the castle.  A red haze descended over his vision. “Stand aside,” he ordered, and such was the tone of his voice that the others obeyed without question.

 

Tony’s anger was such that all it took was a single overhand blow for Tony to reduce the armour to a heap of metal.

 

A heap of empty metal.

 

Everybody gathered around the pile of black spiky sheet metal that had once been a ridiculous suit of armour, and stared. 

 

“I knew those things were magical,” Loki said, sounding shaken, “But I didn’t realise that they existed in the sorcerer’s mind alone.”  She gathered up her curtain and wrapped it tightly around herself. 

 

Steve did the same thing, and then wrapped the flap of his own curtain around both himself and Loki, who turned into Steve’s embrace and buried her face in his shoulder.  Behind them, Bucky and Dr Strange exchanged curious looks. “Who is that?” Strange whispered.

 

Bucky shrugged.

 

Tony’s sword tip drooped, and then dropped completely.  “We’ve got more enemies to fight,” he said. “Haven’t we?”

 

Steve and Loki nodded, and Loki was about to explain when Bucky interrupted.  “Come on,” he said gently, “We’d better get back to the other tower. It looks like night is falling, and Friday’s still outside.”

 

“Oh, lord!” Tony exclaimed before Bucky could point out that she needed to be included in the briefing, and disappeared down the stairs.  Bucky grinned, and the others followed.

 

“Why is Tony’s AI outside?  She's a computer,” Steve asked, confused.

 

Bucky grinned.  “Not here, she’s not.  You’ll see.”

 

It took less than half a minute for them to descend the staircase to where Friday was waiting patiently in the bottom level for them to appear.

 

“Friday!”  Tony exclaimed.  “Look who we found!”

 

“Captain Rogers!” Friday exclaimed, trotting over.  “I’m glad you are alright. Now we can go home and return everybody to normal.”

 

“Miss Friday!” Steve returned her hug.  “How does it feel to have a flesh body?”

 

“Most peculiar,” Friday admitted.  “But very interesting. I shall have to digitise myself a face when I get back to my proper environment.  Maybe even a body.” She looked quite excited by the project.

 

“I’ll make you some sketches,” Steve promised.  “Your current face is lovely.”

 

Friday glowed with pleasure at that remark.  “Thank you!” she said. “Your assistance would be invaluable.  Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”

 

Steve looked around at them all in mild surprise.  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you recognised her. She was changed into a woman for the same reason I was.  This is Loki.”

 

Tony’s jaw dropped.  “I’m not sure what to freak out about first,” she admitted.  

 

“Perhaps we should all get out of the cold to talk about this,” Bucky suggested.

 

“I thought you didn’t feel the cold!” Tony said as they turned towards the guard tower.

 

“What made you think that?”   
  


“You’re wearing almost as little as I am under this padding, and there’s no trace of blue anywhere on your skin.”

 

Bucky grinned rakishly.  “You sure about that, doll?”

 

Tony leered at him.  “You offering to strip to show me what else might need...warming up?”

 

Behind them, Steve looked over at Dr Strange.  “How long has this been going on?”

 

Strange sighed.  “Ever since Tony and I got turned into women.” 

 

“That’s enough, children,” Loki said, sounding faintly amused.  “We need to figure out what’s going to happen next before you two decide to fuck like bunnies.”

 

Tony shot Bucky a sideways glance, a naughty little smirk on his...her...face, and deliberately licked her lips.

 

Bucky returned her a look loaded with promise, but subsided.  “True,” he admitted, and they all settled down in the bottom level of the guard tower.

 

“Well, Dr Strange?” Tony asked.  “You got us here. Now we’ve found Steve - and Loki - how do we get back?”

 

“And how do we make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” Steve added.  “No offense, ladies, but I’d rather have my old body back. Being turned into a mother by a Great Old One isn’t something I fancy in my future.”

 

Dr Strange’s eyebrows went up.  “That’s what our enemy had in mind for you?”

 

Loki nodded gravely.  “It sounds like a power play,” she told them.  “A particularly nasty one. If the sorcerer succeeds in impregnating us with Glhuun’s offspring, and we survive long enough to give birth, the results would devastate humankind.”

 

“Hmmm,” Strange agreed.  “And not just humans. I’ve heard of Glhuun.  Letting that one get a foothold in our world would turn life into a giant compost heap.”

 

“So what do we do?” Tony asked.  

 

“Find the sorcerer, and the room he’s intending to use to summon Glhuun into,” Strange told them.  “There’ll be a statue of Dionysius in it. If we destroy the statue and kill the sorcerer, that will do the trick.  Then I’ll be able to take control of the gateway we all came through and get us back to earth.”

 

“And in the meantime, we’ll get a bit of sleep,” Bucky told them.  “It’s been a fairly exciting day, all told.”

 

As the others went up to the first floor armed with blankets to find themselves a billet for the night, and Friday settled down near the fire, Steve and Bucky took first watch.

 

“You got something going with Tony?” Steve asked his friend quietly.

 

Bucky jumped, a guilty expression crossing his face.  “Um, no? Why do you ask?”

 

“Are you serious?  The last time I saw you trading innuendoes that heavy with anybody, it was with that German drag queen in Paris who’d escaped from Berlin before the war broke out.  And you traded letters with him … her ... for ages afterwards, too.” 

 

Bucky sighed, looked down, and fiddled with the fur lining the top of his boots.  “Yeah. She was special. Tony is, too. I didn’t realise it before this whole sex change business happened, but he is.”

 

“What’s holding you back?  You didn’t hesitate with Camille.”

 

“Yeah, but I didn’t kill Camille’s parents.”

 

“Boss doesn’t blame you for that anymore,” Friday told him quietly.  “He did for a while, but not anymore.”

 

“What changed his mind?” Steve asked curiously.

 

Friday smiled.  “I think you should ask him that.  The last time that particular lecture was recited, it took him about half an hour.”

 

Bucky and Steve exchanged looks.  “Half an hour?” Steve asked slowly.

 

Friday’s smile grew into a grin.  “You’ve spent a lot of time with Boss over the years,” she said.  “You should know what he’s like when he gets started.”

 

“But what’s so complicated about mind control that it takes half an hour to explain?”  Bucky asked, his forehead furrowed.

 

“His reasoning doesn’t involve mind control,” Friday replied, somewhat mysteriously.

 

Steve and Bucky both gaped at her.  

 

“Please don’t ask me to explain,” she added.  “Firstly, Boss wants the chance to bore you both senseless on the subject when he gets the chance.  Secondly, biological memory is apparently much less reliable than digital memory, and I couldn’t even begin to explain.  I don’t remember enough of it.”

 

“Bucky, go upstairs and seduce him,” Steve said, getting to the point.

 

“Steve…”  Bucky started to protest, but then he blushed and glanced at Friday.  

 

Steve’s forehead wrinkled for a moment, but then he realised what else his friend was worried about.  “Bucky. This is the twenty first century. Gay sex isn’t illegal anymore. And besides - Friday has access to all of her predecessor’s files.  Not to mention all the….stuff… that has been released onto the internet. There’s nothing you could possibly do to or with Tony that she hasn’t seen already.”

 

“True,” Friday put in.

 

“I don’t care if it’s legal or not, he’s special,” Bucky replied stubbornly.  “I...I don’t want to treat him like he’s some kind of cheap whore. It’s not like I’ll be slipping out in the night.”

 

“Remember Camille?  You never slipped out on her, and you never hesitated, either.  Go.”

 

“But…”

 

“I will keep watch with Steve,” Friday promised.  “Go to Boss.”

 

With a feeling of dread, Bucky disappeared up the stairs.

 

Behind him, he heard Steve say, “I didn't think you'd encourage him like that.”

 

“I have my reasons,” she replied.  “Barnes will find out what they are soon.”

 

Tony saw Bucky emerge from the stairwell, and slipped out of her chosen bed.  Wordlessly, she grabbed his hand and led him up to the top floor. “If you're worried about my parents, don't be.  I know know that you didn't do it. The video was faked.”

 

“What?” Bucky exclaimed.  “But I remember it happening!  I remember…” He broke off.

 

“The people you killed that night were impersonators.  And their deaths happened a week after the accident that killed Mom and Dad.  The FBI think it was intended to stop me from helping you if you escaped their grasp.  So, sure. You killed people, and they didn't deserve it. But Hydra were in the driver's seat, not you.  And it's not personal anymore. Not for me.”

 

Bucky couldn't help the smile that crossed his face at Tony’s words, and he caressed her cheek with his flesh hand.  She grabbed his wrist and held it there, smiling up at him.

 

Buck’s metal hand landed on her hip, and she stepped into his embrace.  

 

“There's something else you can help me with now,” she said, caressing his chest and shoulders as she looked up at him through her eyelashes.  “I’ve always wanted to know what sex felt like for women, and I don't think I’ll ever get another chance to find out.”

 

Buck’s smile broadened into a grin, and he bent his head to kiss her.

 

=^o^=


	4. Chapter 4

“So, what made you question the footage in the first place?”

 

This was the first sentence that Steve and the others heard from Bucky and Tony as they came down the stairs from the top floor the following morning.

 

“The security camera,” Tony replied.  “It shouldn’t have been there. I was lying in the wreckage of my amour, thinking to myself that I would never have learned the truth if that camera hadn’t been there, and then I remembered that normally, there wasn’t a camera on that road.  It had no reason to be there. So once I’d managed to get out of the armour, I grabbed the cassette and made sure it came back to the US with me.”

 

Steve and Loki exchanged puzzled looks as Friday grinned quietly in the background.  Then Bucky and Tony emerged.

 

“But that’s not really enough to clear me of their deaths,” Bucky said.

 

“Of course not,” Tony agreed.  “And the one or two other little details that I spotted weren’t really enough, either.  But there were two major details that did clear you.”

 

Steve interrupted.  “Hang on - are you saying that Bucky didn’t kill Howard and Maria?”

 

Tony nodded happily.  “That’s right.”

 

Steve nodded, feeling slightly dazed.  “Okay. Just making sure I understood right.”

 

“Anyway,” Tony went on.  “Firstly, the investigation into their deaths was conducted by the FBI, not by SHIELD.  And the FBI were never infiltrated by Hydra. That means that Hydra never had access to the files of the investigation.”

 

Bucky nodded slowly.  “Which means that their data is trustworthy.  Unlike the video.”

 

“Precisely.  And all the forensic evidence said it was an accident.  Dad’s blood alcohol level was through the roof and his skull wasn’t caved in by your metal fist.  It was a bloody great lump of wood that did the damage, and there were fragments of it in the impact site.  And Mom wasn’t strangled, her neck was broken. They both died instantly. Those kinds of deaths leave totally different traces to the ones in the video.”

 

Bucky was still nodding thoughtfully.  “And, at the end of the day, who are you going to trust?  The scientists who looked at the tiny little details, or the random video cassette hidden in a box in an abandoned Hydra base in Syberia?”

 

“Exactly.  I could go on, but we’ve got other things to do.  Like defeat a mad sorcerer, and get back out of the Dreamlands.”

 

There really wasn’t any planning that they could sensibly do.  They were searching the castle, looking for a room with a statue of Dionysius - that is to say, a white marble statue of a beautiful young man with an erection - in it.  That was it.

 

They left the guard house behind, and headed through the nearest door into the body of the citadel.  On the other side was a stone corridor, a lengthy affair lined with windows that looked out onto a courtyard that contained the garden that Tony had wanted to plant there, and definitely didn’t appear to be there from the courtyard that Bucky and the others had entered by.

 

Steve, however, recognised it.  “This is the corridor I was in when I got hit on the head,” he said.

 

“Okay.  Everybody on guard,” Bucky ordered, raising his sword and taking point, just as Tony stepped to the rear and raised her own sword.  Dr Strange shook his hands free and started to raise some energy as he stood in the middle of the group between Steve and Loki on one side, and Friday on the other.

 

Steve and Loki themselves had decided not to completely trust their Dreamlands-affected instincts, and had both chosen to carry maces.  Edged weapons in the hands of those likely to panic, Loki had proclaimed as she reached for a mace, are the gods’ gifts to the enemy. Steve had decided that Loki had a point, and had done the same.

 

Friday had also armed herself with a mace, although she proclaimed somewhat smugly that her hooves were probably her greatest weapon.  Nobody was inclined to disagree with her.

 

Now, as the creature made its way down the corridor towards them, Steve was glad that they had found themselves some weapons at all.

 

“Good grief,” Bucky commented as he looked the thing over.  “It can barely walk. What the hell is it?”

 

“One back leg that looks like it belongs on a horse,” Tony noted thoughtfully.  “The rest of its rear is snake. One human arm and shoulder. One wing on the other side.”

 

“Stop!” Loki shouted violently.  “Tony, just...stop.”

 

Steve’s head shot around to look at his companion.  “Loki? What’s wrong?”

 

“That thing,” Loki said, gesturing towards it.  “Can’t you see who it is? Who it’s supposed to be?”

 

They were all looking at Loki now.  “Loki?” Friday asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.  “It has the head of a raven, which does not provide us with enough features for recognition.  What is it you see?”

 

Loki swallowed convulsively, and Steve wrapped an arm around her shoulders.  She turned, and buried her face in his neck, her hands clutching at the padded garment Steve wore over his other, completely inadequate garments.  “It’s me,” she said, freeing her mouth enough that she could talk intelligibly. “Normally, I can shape shift. I don’t dare try it here - I tried some other, non-shifting spells when I was first brought here, and they all failed.  That thing - that’s what happens when a shift fails. It’s what happens when you get stuck between forms.”

 

Steve wrapped both arms around Loki.  “That thing isn’t you,” he said. “It’s what you fear, but it isn’t actually you.”

 

Loki’s voice was shaking.  “It happened to me once, when I was first learning how to Shift.  I was on Midgard, and I got stuck between human and snake forms. I could barely move for a very long time.  In the end, the Allfather had to rescue me.”

 

Bucky frowned thoughtfully as he looked first at the rather pathetic creature, and then at Loki.  “Dr Strange,” he said. “Out there, I had a run in with a nightmare. I knew it wasn’t real - it was a memory that had been altered to make me helpless.  Is this something of the same nature?”

 

Strange nodded.  “It has the same kind of tracery as the nightmare did,” he replied.  

 

“Then it isn’t real,” Tony said as Friday moved towards the thing.  “You already stopped yourself from becoming that when you tried simple spells, instead of just assuming that you could still do what you could do before.”

 

Loki turned to stare at Tony, wide eyed.  “True. This is another effect of the Dreamplane.”

 

“Creature,” Friday said.  “Leave us in peace, and we will leave you alone, also.  If you persist, we will be forced to attack you.”

 

Loki freed herself from Steve’s embrace and went to stand beside Friday, mace raised.  “You might frighten me, nightmare, but you will never immobilise me!” she proclaimed, and the others were a little impressed at how her voice no longer shook.  “Leave us now.”

 

Tony and Bucky stepped up to flank them, swords raised.  “Listen to the ladies if you want to live,” Bucky growled.

 

The creature stepped backwards a couple of times before turning, shifting into a more manageable shape, and darting off down the corridor.

 

“I guess the lesson here is to make sure we know the difference between what is real, and what is intended merely to frighten us,” Dr Strange commented as they walked carefully down the corridor.

 

“If that’s the best those nightmares can do, then I don’t think we’ve got much to worry about,” Steve replied. 

 

“Don’t underestimate them,” Strange cautioned them.  “If they catch you off guard, they could get through your defenses.  They can gain a great deal of psychic energy from us, simply through trauma.”

 

“He’s right,” Bucky agreed.  “One of them ambushed me on the way here.  It made me relive one of my nastier episodes as a prisoner of Hydra.”

 

Steve started to look a little worried.  “They could get us through our weakest link,” he said.

 

“And which of us is that?” Loki asked, a curious glint in her eye.  

 

Steve’s jaw dropped for a moment as he realised what he’d just said.  “I have no idea,” he said spinelessly, closing it again.

 

Loki grinned at him, and Steve turned to look helplessly at Bucky.  

 

“Don’t look at me, doll,” Bucky grinned, and Steve squawked in sudden outrage.  

 

“Doll?” he sputtered.  “You called me doll?”

 

Behind them, Tony started to laugh helplessly, his laughter escalating until he was leaning against the wall, one arm held across his stomach.  Bucky’s rakish grin turned into a genuine smile as he looked over at Tony, and the others exchanged looks again.

 

Tony managed to point at Steve for a moment.  “Your face!” he stammered though the giggles. “Classic!”

 

Slowly, Tony managed to pull himself together whilst Steve’s face got redder and redder.

 

“You look so cute when you’re angry,” Loki commented, smirking, although Steve could detect a note of sincerity there that made him wonder.  Then, he overheard Dr Strange talking to Friday.

 

“Do you think Steve and Loki are as attracted to each other as Tony and Barnes clearly are?” he asked thoughtfully.

 

“It’s a little hard to tell,” Friday admitted.  “I don’t currently have access to a database full of reference material, and as a result I can’t identify any other normal behavioural patterns for Captain Rogers.  Is it significant?”

 

“Possibly,” Strange replied.  “Loki is very much persona non grata on Earth.  If he winds up with us instead of back wherever he came from when we find the portal home, there could be trouble.”

 

Steve drew breath to defend Loki, and then paused.  He had to be honest. Strange had a point. Then he wondered why exactly he was automatically jumping to the defence of one who had previously been a confirmed enemy.  Perhaps it was because of the amount of time they had spent cuddling. That much body contact, even with an enemy, tended to make a person more sympathetic.

 

Steve was thoughtful as they continued their way down the corridor. 

 

=^o^=

 

They made their way down dark stone corridors, through work rooms, and along dingy passageways that forced them to travel single file.   Most of the rooms were medieval in content, when they weren’t completely empty. Many contained little more than unlit braziers and cots piled high with clean straw.

 

Finally, they found themselves in what could only be a blacksmith’s workshop.  An anvil stood near the cold forge, a rack of tools on the wall behind the anvil.

 

Tony’s fingers twitched at the sight, and twitched again when he spotted the pile of sword and spear blanks on a bench on the other side of the room  It had been quite a while since he had done any simple, straight-forward blacksmith work. In fact, he’d actually had to start lifting weights in the gym in order to maintain the kind of muscle tone he’d been used to.

 

He sighed as he remembered feeling the heat from the forge, and radiating out from the end of the red hot metal in his left hand as he carried it towards the anvil.  He remembered the weight of the hammer in his right, as he rested the metal on the anvil whilst he hammered it towards its proper shape before pushing it back into the glowing, superheated coals so that the metal could regain a proper, malleable temperature.

 

He missed it.  He missed it with an intensity that was almost painful.  Why had he let himself stop smithing? He knew now that he’d have to start making time for proper forge-work.  Perhaps he could make the kitchen staff some proper knives - the more experienced ones were forever complaining about the quality of the chef’s knives available these days.  Ana Jarvis had used the set he’d made for her for the rest of her life, and Jarvis had gone on using them after her death, after all, so he knew he could.

 

“Bucky,” he said, almost dreamily, “Have you ever used throwing knives?”

 

Bucky spun to look at him, startled.  “I have in the past, but I haven’t had a decent set since the sixties.  Why?”

 

“I think I’ll have to make you some when we get back.”

 

Steve smothered a chuckle, and Tony didn’t miss the way Bucky gave him a questioning glance.

 

“Tony’s a blacksmith,” Steve explained.  “I’m guessing he’s missing his forge.”

 

“It’s been way too long, Capsicle,” Tony agreed.

 

Then something behind the forge shifted, and their attention instantly turned towards it.

 

The first thing Tony registered was the tentacles with the hooks on the end.  Tentacle monster? He wondered if this was the nightmare monster back for another attempt, or if this was something else.  He raised his sword and steeled himself to catch sight of another monstrosity.

 

It stepped forward, its motion a lumbering stride with no grace whatsoever.  Something tickled the back of Tony’s mind, and a feeling of dread crawled down his spine.  

 

“Guys, I think this one might be aimed at me.”

 

“You sure?” Bucky asked.

 

“Honestly?  No.”

 

Then the figure stepped out of the shadows and all doubt was cast aside.

 

The monster had Tony’s face and musculature.  The arms, shoulders and back muscles of a man used to pounding metal in a forge presented themselves, along with a very familiar masculine face, complete with goatee.

 

But that’s where the similarities stopped.  There was no sign of intelligence in this face.  The eyes were dead and ravenous, and his mouth… His mouth was missing.

 

He didn’t have….  

 

The Tony Creature’s head split in half, and they discovered that it did have a mouth after all.  What it didn’t have was a brain. 

 

The creature’s mouth stretched across the top of its head, and opened up to reveal razor sharp teeth, a tongue, and no brain.  None whatsover.

 

The thing stepped forward and the shadows dropped lower down its body.  It wasn’t wearing any clothes, and they quickly noticed that, instead of a penis, it had a power cable.  Tony’s breath quickened as he wondered, a trifle hysterically, what voltage it required.

 

The power cable waggled about in front of it as it lumbered towards them, arms outstretched, fingers…   It didn’t have hands. The end of each arm transformed at the wrist into a mass of the tentacles Tony had seen earlier, each tentacle tipped with a hook.  The tentacles on the creature’s right hand snaked out to grab Dr Strange, only to be rebuffed with a stinging slap of magical energy.

 

It reached out towards Dr Strange again, and was rebuffed again.  Tony realised with horror that this thing was, quite literally, a brainless monster with his face.

 

The left hand, however, had reached for Loki, who applied her mace with all the ferocity she could muster.  Tentacles that reached further than the length of the normal human arm, however, were more than a match for a woman wielding a mace, and Loki was soon wrapped firmly in its grasp.  She was unable to suppress a scream as the hooks sank into her flesh.

 

The creature roared incoherently as Dr Strange landed a heavy magical blow in the middle of its chest.  The blow ripped a hole in the creature’s chest, and oil leaked out of it. Everybody could see the cogs and pistons layered just behind what at first sight had appeared to be normal human flesh.

 

Tony’s mouth fell open, almost in sympathy, and the fact that he’d screamed in response didn’t really register.  Nor did the way he dropped his sword. Or the way that Steve darted forward to snatch the weapon up off the ground.  

 

He backed away from the creature, ready to run, and collided with Friday.  He darted around to hide behind her, and looked back just in time to see Steve slice the monster in half with Tony’s own abandoned sword.

 

The creature’s halves slid apart from each other, pistons and gears visible and dribbling mineral-based lubricant, and Tony’s incoherent fear dissipated.  He was momentarily afraid that the creature’s corpse would remain like that, but it didn’t. He was almost relieved when the monstrous, brainless, handless version of himself dissolved into a clear puddle of ichor.

 

He turned blindly, dumbly, totally confused as to what he should do next, hovering on the bring of hysteria.  He collided with a large, male torso, and a pair of lips kissed his forehead.

 

“It’s alright, darlin,” a now-familiar mid north-Pacific accent told him gently.  “You can let it out.”

 

Tony collapsed gratefully into Bucky’s waiting arms, allowing the unshed tears (Stark men don’t cry, after all - even when they’re women) to dry in his eyes as the remnants of the terror dissipated and he stopped shaking.

 

He didn’t know how long he stood there for, sandwiched between Friday and Bucky, but it was some time.  Eventually, though, Tony pulled himself together and took another quick look around.

 

“Quite a trip, that,” he said conversationally.

 

“Ain’t it just,” Bucky agreed ruefully.

 

Tony looked him in the eye.  “Thanks,” he said.

 

“Not a problem, Tony,” Bucky replied with a faint smile.  “Glad I could be there for you.”

 

Tony patted Friday’s flank in thanks, and stepped away from them.  Quietly, Steve handed Tony his sword back, even as he patched up Loki’s wounds as best he could with the materials he had been able to find around the workshop.

  
“Thanks, Cap,” Tony said, looking him in the eye, too.

 

Steve nodded once and went back to helping Loki.  Tony glanced at the ichor still dripping from the sword, and looked around for a rag.  He quickly found one, and thoroughly cleaned his sword whilst Loki regained her composure.

 

Finally, though, they were ready to move on.

 

=^o^=

 

“There has to be something down here,” Loki commented as they walked down the gently sloped and widely curving passage.  

 

“You think so?” Strange asked conversationally.

 

“Oh, yes,” Loki replied.  “It’s a classic pattern. The evil sorcerer always seems to lurk in a cavern underneath a castle.  If they aren’t at the very top of a tower, they’ve got the deepest, darkest cavern in the area. The way we’re spiralling down right now is a pretty good indicator.”

 

Steve glanced over at her.  “You’ve encountered lots of evil sorcerers, then?”

 

Loki rolled her eyes.  “Thor and I used to go adventuring together, when we were only a couple of centuries old.  Much like your teenagers, really. There was always some sorcerer or other somewhere who was up to no good.”

 

“What are the similarities here?” Strange asked intently.  “And the differences?”

 

“The lack of stairs is the main difference,” Loki replied instantly.  “It suggests that whatever we will be facing lacks legs.”

 

Steve blinked in surprise.  “But when the sorcerer came up to see us earlier, he didn’t have any problems with stairs.”

 

“Yes,” Loki mused, “Which is also interesting.”

 

“Perhaps it was some kind of projection,” Strange suggested.  “Or a simulacrum.”

 

Loki nodded thoughtfully.  “It’s possible,” she agreed.  “And worrying. That kind of sorcerer tends to be fairly unpleasant.”

 

“The fact that this sorcerer wanted Glhuun to reproduce is also very suggestive,” Strange said.  “Our enemy is likely to be something fairly revolting.”

 

“I would recommend fireballs, since you seem to still have control of your magic,” Loki told him.

 

Strange frowned.  “You think…”

 

Loki nodded.

 

“Care to share with the class?” Tony asked impatiently.  “If there’s a squick factor involved here, I’d rather know now than find out the hard way.”

 

“Damned straight,” Bucky agreed.  

 

Strange sighed.  “There’s a form of magic that ensures a form of immortality.”

 

The others waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.  Loki’s face started to turn a little green, but she finally continued for Strange.  “The problem is that the sorcerer has to transfer his consciousness into another form.  The usual way is by imprisoning some part of yourself in some indestructible container and then hiding it in an impossible-to-reach location - for a given value of the words indestructible and impossible, of course.  But it’s not the only way.”

 

“Loki, love,” Steve said, and then stopped.  He looked surprised at himself. “Um,” he said, his thought processes completely derailed.

 

“You look a little sick, Loki,” Friday said gently.  “Are you alright?”   
  


Loki and Strange both visibly pulled themselves together.  “Sorry,” Strange said. “The thought of it makes us both queasy.  The other way is to transfer your consciousness not into one indestructible container, but into a large mass of destructible containers that have a high reproduction rate and can therefore replace itself almost as soon as you destroy its component bits.”

 

“It’s fraught with danger, and the sorcerer is likely to undergo severe personality shifts as his consciousness is subject to the rapid updates in his new physique,” Loki added, “But it does do the job.”

 

Friday frowned thoughtfully.  She might not have a computer for a brain anymore, but much of her previous database had transferred itself into this new, biological form.  It was highly corruptible and considerably less reliable than her previous form, but it was still capable of providing her with acceptable answers to her queries.  “What sort of life span would such creatures generally have?” she asked.

 

“It depends on the resources available,” Loki replied, her expression becoming more comfortable as she took herself back to less sickening mental territory.  “Anything that can be maintained in plague proportions in the long term will do. If a sorcerer is very lucky in his environment, he’ll use mice, which live for about a year each.  Usually, though, they use maggots.”

 

Tony’s face turned the same shade of green as Loki’s.  “Maggots. Do I want to know how this transfer takes place?”

 

“Hell, no,” Strange replied.  “But we’ll tell you anyway. The maggots eat the sorcerer’s body while he still lives.”

 

Bucky sat down heavily and rested his head in his hands.  “That’s sickening.”

 

The others nodded.

 

“And that’s what we’ll be facing?” Steve asked  “A maggot monster?”

 

Friday swallowed convulsively.  “It’s the most likely scenario, given the resources available in this area,” she commented.  “I had not anticipated that a mere discussion could prompt such a … biological reaction in me,” she added.

 

Tony rubbed her horse back sympathetically, and then wrapped an arm around her human back.  “It makes a difference, being biological,” he said.

 

She pulled him around and gave him a hug.  “I’m starting to understand why Loki likes hugging Steve so much, too,” she whispered.

 

Tony grinned.  “Biology can be fun as well as squicky,” he told her.

 

She snickered.  “You know, I did manage to get that impression from watching you.  Especially when I reviewed my predecessor’s files.”

 

Unexpectedly, Tony blushed.  “What?” she said defensively.  “I like sex, okay?” 

 

“Can we get on now?” Steve asked impatiently.  “We have an evil sorcerer to defeat and I would really like to get back where we belong.”

 

“Those tits getting to be a bit much for you?” Tony asked, not unsympathetically.

 

“Ugh,” Steve replied.  “I like breasts as much as the next man, but mine are really uncomfortable.”

 

Bucky nodded thoughtfully.  “I could probably teach you how to do backflips,” he said.  “Your centre of gravity is high enough now. But you do need to wear a proper bra.”

 

Tony grinned a little.  “I never thought having small breasts would be an advantage.”

 

“Definitely an advantage,” Bucky agreed with him, and launched into a lecture on how breast size affected fighting technique and gymnastic possibilities.

 

Finally, Steve stopped him.  “Bucky, if this gender change turns out to be permanent, I will come to you for Black Widow training, I promise.  Can we please get on with it?”

 

“I hate to agree with Steve and break off such a fascinating lecture,” Loki agreed, sounding almost as if she meant it, “But I can smell something distinctly unpleasant headed this way.  We should prepare for an attack.”

 

It didn’t take long for the others to smell what Loki had smelt.  It was a singularly charnel-house sort of smell, the kind of odour associated with rotting flesh and congealed blood.  Friday turned pale and she and Tony both felt themselves retch.

 

Gulping down his physical reaction to the smell, Tony raised his sword and stepped to the front with Bucky.  Glancing over, he saw that Bucky’s face was a trifle pale, but he seemed fairly composed. 

 

“You alright?” Tony asked.

 

Bucky nodded briefly.  “The smell reminds me a little too much of the Front, before Steve turned up,” he admitted.  “But at least it’s a trigger to fight the enemy.”

 

It was Loki, standing off to one side in the corridor, who got the first look at their enemy.  “The enemy is almost upon us!” she shouted, backing away and raising her mace. “And I don’t like the look of those claws!”

 

The others nodded briefly.

 

Less than a minute later, the creatures were charging towards them.

 

Not that charging was really the right word, Tony thought as he raised his sword to strike.  Lurching would be closer. They seemed a bit off balance, most of them, slumping forward almost to the point where they were ready to topple over.  Some of them were missing limbs, and had replaced them with makeshift prosthetics - one had lost part of one leg below the knee, and had a couple of stout sticks hammered through the remains of its calf muscle as a replacement.

 

He hacked at the one that reached him first, and it lurched backwards.  Its reactions were faster than he had anticipated, and the tip of his sword only sliced through the skin of its belly, causing a dribble of semi-congealed blood to form.  As the creature rolled over onto its limbs again, he revised his opinion on their stance - there was something about them that suggested that standing upright was something that had been forced upon them.  They would have been more at home on all fours, once upon a time. 

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Loki strike the skull of one with her mace, caving it in, and he decided that she had the right idea.  He stepped forward, sword raised again, to decapitate the one at his feet.

 

He missed, raising sparks at his sword struck the stone where his opponent’s head had only just been.  It’s earlier successful dodge of his strike was, it seemed, not a coincidence. It appeared to be capable of moving faster than he would have thought, given its lurching walk and apparent clumsiness.

 

Another one came up beside him, and unlike its companion, it didn’t manage to dodge Tony’s strike. Tony sliced it in two before he returned his attention to the one he’d scraped with his sword.

 

It was retreating, emitting a strange gibbering and meeping sound soon echoed by the others.  Tony spun around quickly, sword at the ready, but he didn’t attempt to attack or block the retreating creatures as they ran past him and back down the corridor.  As soon as they had gone, he turned his attention back to the others. 

 

Several of the creatures were dead.  Friday had three of them at her feet - two behind her with their skulls crushed by her hooves, and one in front of her in a similar condition, although Tony suspected that the one in front had more to do with her mace than her hooves.  She looked more than a little smug, and Tony didn’t blame her. “Well done,” he complimented her, and she favoured him with a radiant smile.

 

Loki, however, had been bitten by one.  Bucky had decapitated it, but its head still remained attached to her, clamped by its jaw onto her shoulder from behind.  Dr Strange had produced a dagger and was attempting to lever its mouth open, apparently unable to find a spell to do the job.

 

Bucky had a series of long claw marks on his chest, and Steve was cleaning them up.  Carefully, Tony looked Steve, Dr Strange, and Friday over for more wounds. Fortunately, he didn’t find any, so he turned his attention to their fallen attackers.

 

They didn’t appear to have any identifying marks, or any other clue as to who or what they might have been.  Under other circumstances, they would have been indistinguishable from humans. Their only distinguishing features were those deadly sharp claws.

 

Shrugging, he turned to help Dr Strange divest Loki of the second head that had clamped itself to her shoulder.

 

It took some time for them to detach the head from her shoulder, and the head was a mangled mess before it was gone.  And by the time they were done, Loki was seated on the floor and leaning against Steve, noticeably weakened. 

 

As Dr Strange cleaned her up, he caught Tony’s eye.  “We need to finish this, and soon” he said. Tony nodded his agreement.

 

“I’ll scout ahead,” Bucky said, and was gone before anybody could say anything else.

 

Tony knelt in front of Loki.  It felt strange to have her there, as an ally rather than as an enemy, but she had so far not shown any sign that she should be treated as an enemy.  There had been no attempts made to take control of them, or guide their footsteps, or even contact the enemy in any way. She had helped them, and Steve would have said something, if not to him then to Bucky, if he had noticed anything.  “How are you doing?” he asked.

 

Loki pulled herself upright.  “I feel utterly drained,” she admitted.  “But a good night's rest should sort me out.  I don't think I’ll be up for much more fighting, though.”

 

Strange gave her a Doctor look.  “No more brawling for you, young lady,” he said firmly.  “Doctor's orders. Hang back if there's any more fighting.”

 

Loki gave him an unimpressed look.  “I thought you were a sorcerer, not a medic.”

 

Strange drew himself up, offended.  “I’ll have you know that I am a Doctor of Medicine.  I was a neurosurgeon before I was a sorcerer, and I have since gained the right to practice as a general practitioner.”

 

Tony blinked.  “On top of your commitments to managing New York’s sorcerer community?  How do you manage that? Even I couldn’t juggle managing Stark Industries with everything else.”

 

Strange slumped slightly, and Tony realised that the man looked tired.  “The studying was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in ages,” he admitted.  “But it’s worth it. The monks are highly learned at magic, but they know nothing about science.  And they get hurt all the time. The kind of hurt that magic can’t sort out. Or something happens and magic leaves them with some illness or other that has to be suffered through.  And it’s the kind of thing that a GP can help them with.”

 

“How did they cope with being told to go to bed with a hot water bottle and some chicken soup?” Tony asked, faintly amused at the thought.

 

Strange chuckled.  “They were taken aback at first.  But they’re starting to get used to it.”

 

“So basically, you’re Midgardian sorcery’s answer to the Allmother,” Loki suggested thoughtfully.

 

“Good analogy,” Strange agreed.

 

At that moment, Bucky returned.  “I’ve found what we’re looking for, but it’s guarded.  This won’t be easy.”

 

“Then tell us what you saw, and we’ll make a plan,” Steve said, and they all settled down to talk it through.

 

=^o^=

 

Steve had to remind himself that he was not a damsel in distress as he followed Tony and Bucky into the sorcerer’s workroom.  Screaming hysterically, therefore, was not an option. Seriously. No matter how much he wanted to.

 

He suspected that he’d forgive himself for feeling this way later on, once they’d got out of it all okay.  But for now? He’d just come face to face with a semi-mobile skeleton that was dripping maggots all over the place, guarded by another one of those gigantic suits of black spiky armor.  Bucky raised his sword without hesitation and, the muscles in his back and arms rippling with force, reduced it to scrap metal.

 

The sorcerer moved back a couple of steps at the sight and raised his skeletal hands to counter attack.  Before he could, though, Dr Strange stepped to one side of the group and aimed a fireball at the pile of maggots, causing it to move back further.  A smell that reminded Steve of partially decayed roasting meat filled the air, and he gagged. 

 

Nearby, a collection of what appeared to be zombies approached them.  Steve raised his mace as he took in their appearance, and forced himself to remember what Strange had told them about the dreamlands - this place was the amalgam of the subconscious of the human race, and could be manipulated by skilled sorcerers to show you what you feared most.

 

Or even what would distract you most at any given moment.

 

In this case, it was seeing all of the people he had ever cared about, including copies of the people around him, transformed into moaning, shuffling zombies.

 

The zombies were dirty and mouldy, their skin grey and decaying, their clothes ripped and falling to pieces.  The decay they suffered varied wildly from one part of their bodies to the next - holes in their chests revealed sections of their rib cages, whilst their legs were reasonably intact.  The zombie version of Nick Fury had quite a lot of his scalp missing, whilst Clint was reduced to swinging his bow wildly with his only remaining hand.

 

“Thor,” Loki whispered, looking sickened at the sight of her brother.  But it didn’t stop her from raising her own mace, perched as she was on Friday’s back.  Friday pranced forwards, and the pair of them started caving in skulls.

 

Steve pulled himself together as he glanced around at the others.  Tony and Bucky were facing their own zombies - one of them appeared to be Steve himself, Steve noticed - and were slicing them to pieces.  Steve applied his mace to the skull of somebody who resembled Sam, and followed it up by caving in head of somebody else who resembled the young Howard Stark.

 

That turned out to be easier than he had thought it would be, given that he’d spotted Tony doing something equally destructive to a zombie-version of the older Howard Stark across the other side of the room.

 

Another fireball blossomed, quickly followed by a third, and before anybody quite knew what had happened, all the action had finished.  The sickening cooked meat smell spread throughout the room, and Steve suspected that this was the smell of cooked maggots.

 

The death of all the sorcerer’s component parts had led to the collapse of all the remaining zombies, and all the rest of the sorcerer’s spells collapsed as well.

 

Steve had a disorenting moment that finished just before he realised that he had become male again.  He couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming “Oh, thank god!” as he realised that he was now wearing leather trousers and warm leather armor covered with steel plates.

 

He looked around again, and noticed that all of the others were not only their proper genders again, but also were properly clothed, albeit clothed for dreamlands adventuring rather than for the streets of New York.  And all of them looked relieved at the change.

 

Of all of them, Bucky was the only one who remained completely unchanged.  He still wore nothing more than a fur loincloth and a pair of fur-lined boots, and Steve was reminded (with a tinge of hysteria, since he was being honest with himself) of those Robert E Howard stories that Bucky had once read, when he’d been able get his hands on them.

“What are thews, anyway?” he asked aloud, and the others stared at him.

 

Bucky rolled his eyes and smacked him upside the back of his head.

 

Dr Strange smiled at them.  “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, wrapping his wings around himself, much as though they were still a cape.

 

=^o^=

 

The other recent arrivals to the Tower were just stirring as Tony, Bucky and Steve drank coffee and quietly processed their recent adventure.  Tony and Bucky were pretending to watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon, while Steve sketched. When Tony caught a glimpse of what Steve was drawing, he saw Friday’s Dreamland features taking shape under his fingers.

 

Bucky, on the other hand, was having troubles keeping his eyes off Tony.

 

“You know it’s legal to be gay now, don’t you?” Tony asked softly.

 

Bucky nodded.  “Yeah. Every time I turn around, it seems like somebody else is telling me that.  You made a beautiful dame, Tony.”

 

Tony couldn’t help the warm feeling that spread through his chest at the compliment, and he smiled.  “You’re pretty hot yourself, you know. And if you ever feel like another round with me, just say.”

 

Steve glanced up at them both.  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said.  “Is sex better for women? Since, you know, you’re probably the only person who actually knows.”

 

Tony laughed.  “It’s so different that it’s incomparable,” he assured them both with a smile.


	5. Epilogue

A transparent 3D model of a naked woman floated in front of Steve, static whilst Friday waited for him to consider the shape of it and suggest amendments.

 

“I’d like to make some minor changes, please,”  he asked.

 

“Go ahead, Captain" Friday replied, and Steve stepped forward.

 

Gently, he made a couple of minor alterations to the nose and jaw, and stepped back again.  Then he made a few more alterations to the shape of the breasts, followed by the shoulders.

 

It took him nearly an hour before he was happy with the results he had made to the upper body.  Then, he stepped back again.

 

“Friday, I have used a fairly generic shape for your lower body, since the Dreamlands version was horse shaped.  How would you like me to proceed?”

 

“Your work on my upper body is lovely,” she replied.  “Please make something that matches.”

 

“Right,” Steve declared happily, and stepped forward again.

 

He was kneeling in front of the hologram with his arms wrapped around her, moulding her bottom and thighs, when Tony walked in with Clint and Natasha.

 

All three stopped dead at the sight of Steve apparently nuzzling a hologram of a naked woman just below her belly button.  

 

Clint cleared his throat, and Steve looked around, completely unabashed.  

 

Tony suddenly realised just what Steve had actually been doing, and pulled himself together.  “We’ve just heard from Thor,” he said. “It seems things have gone horribly wrong for the good people of Asgard, and what is left of their civilisation is headed in this direction.”

 

Steve frowned, and stood up.  “What do you mean, what is left?”

 

Natasha sighed.  “It sounds like Thor has a wild story to tell,” she said, “but the gist of it is that Thor has - or had - a sister who was even crazier than Loki, and Thor had to start Ragnarok to stop her.  There are a few hundred Asgardian refugees left, and they’re headed for Earth.”

 

“And Loki?”

 

“He’s with them, yes.  Thor says he’s looking forward to catching up with you.”

 

Steve couldn’t stop the smile that crossed his face.  “I’ve actually missed him,” he admitted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote, folks! At least on this.


End file.
